Thanks for your help. I found an AC97 Win 7/vista 64 bit driver *from"
named "Vista_Win7_Win8_R270(1)" from the realtek driver site. Downloaded it w/o trouble, and ran it (exe file) rebooted and the little speaker went from a red X to a normal icon. All seemed fine, but no sound. Looked at the drivers..checked out okay. Checked all the sound setting, volumes mixer settings, etc. speaker plugged in. No sound from speaker or headphones, grrrr!
Device drive settings in Control Panel seem okay..states drivers working.
All right ok nothing to worry about. When installing the realtek driver it automatically sets the output to digital. You need to select 'speakers' . Just right click on the volume icon then playback devices change the digital to speakers. Sound should come back.