NO Sound - 865PE Neo2-PFS Platinum Edition

I'm getting no sound (except for typical low volume "white noise") from the external speakers attached to a new, OEM MSI 865PE Neo2-PFS Platinum Edition motherboard. Here's are my "vitals". MSI 865PE Neo2-PFS Platinum Edition w/ onboard Realtek AC'97 CODEC (ALC655 chip) onbord Realtek® 8110S Ethernet "NIC" AMI Bios V 3.9 Intel P4 @ 3.0 ghz Kingston HyperX KHX3500/256 (one stick, @ 2-3-3-7-8) Asus V7700 GForce2 GTS Deluxe w/ 16MB w/ v5.6.7.3 drivers IBM Deskstar 120GXP 80GB 7200PRM IDE (port 0) Aopen AOpen CD956E CD-ROM (port 1) Sony CRX195-E1 CD-RW (port 1) Unknown Brand Floppy Disk Drive CTX PL9 19" Monitor Enermax EG365P-VE (FMA) Power Supply 32A on +3.3V line, 32A on +5V Line and 1A on +12V line 185W on +3.3/+5 Powered Altec-Lansing Speakers (2) WinXP Home SP2 (no luck w/ "original" WinXP Home either) After several failed attempts - and numerous visits to this forum (thanks to all) - I devised and employed the following "clean install" procedure. Jumpered pins 5-6 and 9-10 pins on the JAUD1 front panel audio connector Powered up, entered BIOS Setup and disabled onboard LAN and audio Boot w/ WinXP Home Edition (pre-SP1) in CD-ROM Drive Installed WinXP Home Edition (clean install w/ full format of target partition) Installed WinXP SP2 Upgrade (which was uneventful) Installed Intel's INF chipset drivers Enabled onboard "NIC" in BIOS Setup & rebooted Installed LAN Drivers (the "NIC" works well) Rebooted Installed DirectX 9.0c (the sound chip requires V8.0 of better) Enabled audio chip in BIOS Setup & rebooted Installed the audio drivers (5.10.0.5620) as described here ... Guide to Realtek sound on NF2 boards (by backwoodz) Rebooted ALL of the drivers were acquired from MSI's website. Other facts. Other than the audio, the rig is stable and fully functional DOT and MAT are turned off Windows Device Manager says that ... ALL installed devices (incl. The audio chip) are working. The audio chip has IRQ17 all to itself. The device's audio properties says "Use this device (enable)". The Control Panel applet says that the Realtek audio chip is the default for sound playback and recording. All volume controls have been set to full, unmuted volume. Soundman was configured for simple 2-speaker stereo mode (which is what I have). Soundman was subsequently reconfigured to employ all other (11) possible settings (but not, of course, at the same time) ALL (3) of the various power supply calculators I've tried suggest that mine is more than adequate I have no "extra" stand-offs and no stray conductors under the motherboard. I don't have an I/O sheild or the D-Bracket Yet, I'm not getting ANY sound from Windows itself (e.g. At startup and shutdown), Windows Media Player 9, Soundman or the CD-ROM. But, the speakers work when they're plugged into the headphone jack of the CD-ROM drive. I've tried all four hardware acceleration settings, am not overclocking (at least not yet), And, yes, after all that, I downloaded the new (5.10.0.5720) drivers from Realtek's web site and installed them. Nada. At this point, I'm inclined to believe that the Realtek audio chip is defective and that I should buy a sound card. But, if you've got an idea, I'm listening. Thanks in advance!