While not exactly directly relevant to the sound problem, let me assist your understanding of the demon machines with an example

I DON'T WANT LOTS OF TECHNICAL SUGGESTIONS SUCH AS RELOAD WINDOWS! I'VE DONE IT _ALLLLLL_, SEVERAL TIMES, AND AM definitely NOT A TECHNICAL NEWBIE! But if you really _KNOW_ what is wrong I'll listen to anybody!

My Bog standard Win98 (a p133 machine with 64Mb) with MSIE V6.1 and all upgrades from the WinUpgrade site, will not let me perform internet banking or get into my public library to extend my borrowings. It also doesn't work on a few other web sites.

It fails with an error similar to
"Javascript error on Line 1 - undeclared variable" -
NO ONE can say what is wrong. (And I have lots of techie friends - even used to work as a system admin...) Even complaints (with log trails) submitted to The Banking Ombudsman just result in "hands in air, shrug shoulders" responses after the "Reload Windows" level of assistance... :-)

It really to do with the fact that the HTML code on these sites is not "standard" HTML, but has non-standard extensions that JUST DON'T WORK on my machine, but no-one can say what is wrong, even the people who wrote the code!

Robin