I Drove All night

R108904 - Network card
R128346 - Intel graphics
R140747 - Wireless card
R143248 - cineplayer update/patch (wtf?)
R150593 - network card (another one...?)
R171789 - Audio driver

Sound not working through the headphones but ok coming out of the PC speakers? Tsk, not again, ay? Fugging dodgy soundcard.

Tried unplugging the headphones, plugging 'em into the microphone slot (ooh er) and then back into the headphone slot? That works sometimes, honest, guv'.

Still no joy, huh?

Go to ControlPanel > Add/Remove Programs and remove Sigmatel Audio. Sadly, that's not the last you'll see of that.

Run setup.exe from the R171789 directory.

Yaddayaddayaddaahhhh, it does is thing, you restart the computer and all should be fine.

Put on Franz Ferdinand's 'Blood' and chillax.

('Course, if it doesn't work after all THAT, then you've reached the point beyond where you've been before, which might well be the point of no return - I wonder if they've cheap laptops in Lidl this week...)