UPDATE: My speaker configuration was out of whack, a friend of mine talked me through the changes and I HAVE SOUND!! It's a wonderful, wonderful thing!!

And I'm NEVER letting Vista update, ever again.

Thank you all for your input and help!

So what have you done?????

I had a friend walk me through every step of reconnecting the speakers. It turns out they were plugged into the wrong port all along, and Windows BEFORE the service pack was able to compensate for that and found them anyway. After the service pack, it no longer recognized the wrong connection.
I reconnected them as though installing them for the first time, picked the correct configuration in the pop up window and viola! Sound. It's a wonderful thing.

If you are having trouble also, I recommend contacting a Microsoft rep, I had one e-mailing me back and forth trying to help. It was just a fluke that my friend figured it out first.

lol. You were very lucky to get such cooperation. Hardly a Microsoft problem
By the way,
"And I'm NEVER letting Vista update, ever again."
Why do you feel the problem was related to Vista updates?