When I boot 7100 the Audio icon in the tray initially contains a red x but that mostly disappears after a minute or so. However, about 1 out of 5 boots the red x remains on the audio icon in the tray, and if I run the mouse over the icon it says "The Audio service is not running", but the audio service IS running - Device manager shows no problems, Audiosrv is running,and I get all sound OK.I suspect this is some sort of timing problem within W7 as I am running on an old IntelP4 1.8MHz with 1GB ram. The audio is AC'97 on board. It is very slow to start up.But it shouldn't happen.Any suggestions?

I have the same issue on my laptop, a Dell Inspiron 1521. Audio works great, just the icon in the system tray has the red X on it.

I don't think this would be related to the speed of your CPU but I can't rule that out. It could simply be a driver issue. So the sound on your computer works perfectly fine? Are you still experiencing this behavior? -Nick

Yes it still happens about 1 in 10 boots

I have this same issue on my new ASUS ET2400XVT... Can't be a slow processor issue since I have a core i7.