Help: Laptop sound stopped working

[AR_Six]

For no apparent reason, since yesterday my laptop's sound stopped working. Speakers don't work, headphones don't work. Yet the computer doesn't recognize anything is wrong, it thinks sound is playing normally. I tried reinstalling the drivers, I tried a system restore, no dice. Any ideas how I fix this? It's infuriating.

[Barnes]

Does it have an optical/minijack port? Sometimes a minijack plug can switch it to optical and the computer thinks you have an optical cable plugged in.

[AR_Six]

Yes. And it doesn't do anything either. No sound through headphones, even though the computer thinks it's playing sound through them - the equalizer is going like it's making noise, but it isn't.

[smoothpops]

You're going to hate me for suggesting this; but check all of your mute buttons. It's happened to me once or twice, where a mute option is checked on an equalizer and i go about re-installing drivers and what not for nothing. take a deep breath and check em, if that's not it, i got nothing for ya, sorry.

[Kavvy]

I had this issue with my old Dell computer, and it could be this – the headphone port failed. If it is that, depending on how it failed, you may be able to put a headphone jack in and pull back to get some sound to your headphones (i.e. if you put a jack into the port and push it up down/side to side you may get some sound- over time this is bad for the jack itself). I couldn’t replace the port as it was satured (spelling?) to the case of the laptop underneath a side you could not access no matter how well you took it apart unless you wanted to break the “weld”.

When this happen to me, because the jack then confused the on board soundcard of where sound should be coming from – my on board speakers failed as well. Despite what you may think, in my case you could not tell the on board sound card to use the on board speakers via software (I googled and googled).

The fix – a USB sound card, worked like a charm. May want to confirm the problem is the port failing prior to spending the $60-$90.

[AR_Six]

I've had the headphone jack thing too, but it wasn't that. I still don't know what it was. After doing 2 system restores back to earlier points and reinstalling drivers a couple of times and doing a half-dozen other things only to have windows assure me that it couldn't find anything wrong, I battery-pulled, waited a bit and started over and suddenly there is sound. No clue why that worked, and my laptop is really annoying to do battery pulls on (never done one before, the battery is built into the chassis).

Can't wait for the next adventure with windows.

[MaDMaN_26]

Windows 8? I had the same problem - fixed it by reverting to windows 7

[AR_Six]

Nope, 7. Stuff usually gets screwed up when there's a windows update. Literally, 50% of windows updates lead to me doing a system restore to pre-update to fix some massive bust that results.

[MaDMaN_26]

Originally Posted by AR_Six

Nope, 7. Stuff usually gets screwed up when there's a windows update. Literally, 50% of windows updates lead to me doing a system restore to pre-update to fix some massive bust that results.

ah that sucks, I don't have as much bad luck with the updates, usually I don't notice them... I upgraded to windows 8 on my new laptop which came with win7, since I still have my desktop I thought it might be a good way to get some exposure to win8... I was very very thankful I made the system restore disk before moving it to 8. Junk OS imho.

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by MaDMaN_26

ah that sucks, I don't have as much bad luck with the updates, usually I don't notice them... I upgraded to windows 8 on my new laptop which came with win7, since I still have my desktop I thought it might be a good way to get some exposure to win8... I was very very thankful I made the system restore disk before moving it to 8. Junk OS imho.

Kind of a derail, but I don't really get the hate. It's basically Windows 7 that loads faster with a UI overlay that can be disabled with a $5 app.

It's certainly not Vista (release/SP1) or ME.

[MaDMaN_26]

I don't hate windows 8 because its what the cool kids are doing, I hated my experience. I constantly plug my laptop into my recievers HDMI to watch netflix on my TV. it never worked properly and eventually I lost all sound and after two solid days - an entire weekend of installing and uninstalling drivers and chasing down 30+ possible issues suggested on random forums and getting absolutely no where I was doen with it. (my hdmi habbits work with zero issues on win 7 same laptop.)

I didn't find it to be the same OS at all though... finding things I'm used to seeing in the control panel or the like were moved or gone... I spent years and years (like it or not) getting used to how windows was laid out and they kind of blew most of it away so they could put the idiotic overlay on the actual desktop, but then removed features...

if like you say all they did was add an overlay that I could close/ignore I'd agree with you - but once you start troubleshooting you'll see exactly how much they moved or removed and gets not fun very quickly.

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by MaDMaN_26

I don't hate windows 8 because its what the cool kids are doing, I hated my experience. I constantly plug my laptop into my recievers HDMI to watch netflix on my TV. it never worked properly and eventually I lost all sound and after two solid days - an entire weekend of installing and uninstalling drivers and chasing down 30+ possible issues suggested on random forums and getting absolutely no where I was doen with it. (my hdmi habbits work with zero issues on win 7 same laptop.)

I didn't find it to be the same OS at all though... finding things I'm used to seeing in the control panel or the like were moved or gone... I spent years and years (like it or not) getting used to how windows was laid out and they kind of blew most of it away so they could put the idiotic overlay on the actual desktop, but then removed features...

if like you say all they did was add an overlay that I could close/ignore I'd agree with you - but once you start troubleshooting you'll see exactly how much they moved or removed and gets not fun very quickly.

*Shrug* I use my Win 8 laptop for that exact thing on my bedroom TV (Laptop HDMI--->Receiver--->TV) all the time and I've never had that happen. To be fair however, my laptop came with Win 8 pre-installed, so I would assume that all it's internals have compatible drivers. The only aftermarket thing I've installed so far is an mSATA SSD.

On the topic of UI/control functions, installing Start8 ($5) literally fixes every problem in that regard.

I play games (Civ 5, SimCity, MW:O), have recorded audio & edited video (Adobe Audition & Premiere CS6), and created e-learning modules for work (Adobe Captivate CS6) with no lock ups, freezes, BSODs, reboots, missing audio, missing video, driver crashes, corrupt sectors, etc.

Suffice to say, I've had an even more stable experience in my first 3 months with Windows 8 than I had with Windows 7 when it came out.

[/endderail]

[MaDMaN_26]

Maybe your right and if I had installed a start menu useing start8 or http://ninite.com/ I'd be happy... I think your right though win8 was not ready for my hardware or my hardware was not ready for win8... I have the key purchased... I can go back to 8 any time I want... I might in the future... but for now win7 is working great and just not painful for me so I have no reason to move.

[cKy]

So back to help AR here..

If you open Device Manager (Right click on My Computer - Manage - Device Manager). Does the Sound device have any issues with it? If not, I would completely uninstall it from there. Reboot and see if Win 7 picks it up. If so, then you know it isnt a driver issue.

[Thor]

Originally Posted by AR_Six

Nope, 7. Stuff usually gets screwed up when there's a windows update. Literally, 50% of windows updates lead to me doing a system restore to pre-update to fix some massive bust that results.

Sounds like you have something wrong outside of the software running your system, that kind of ratio is extreme.

Its either motherboard, your hard drive or if you are having any blue screens maybe your ram, but unlikely since you didn't mention any blue screens.

I know people love to blame windows for everything, but as an IT guy I can tell you that its 95% of the time the user who installed some crap software, messed with drivers they shouldn't have, or a host of other stuff they screwed up.

Not saying thats you, but I spend so many hours remotely looking at computers with so much crap installed on the computer, a operating system that has been there for 4 years without a clean install, and everyone ends up blaming microsoft.

Win 7 is one of the most stable operating systems I have come across.