Can you help with a sound problem with my PC?

When I try to listen to anything from my desktop Dell PC, such as music from a CD, a news story on CNN, or clips on YouTube, I can’t really hear the sound. If I turn the volume all the way up, and put my ear right next to a speaker, I can just barely hear it, but it is there a little bit.
I checked that the volume control accessed from an icon on the tray is un-muted and turned up. Also, I went to the Control Panel and accessed the sound windows and verified that the volume is up everywhere.
I went ahead and downloaded and reinstalled the audio driver, but the behavior is exactly the same.

So any ideas on why I can just barely hear anything?

Are the speakers plugged in to power?

Check to see if the speakers are plugged in all the way. And if they are, try moving the cord around in various positions while sound is playing to see if it makes a difference. You might have a short in your cord.

Check that your audio output device is set to speakers/headphones in control panel.
My wife’s Dell laptop has a problem with audio output using the speakers. Works fine with headphones but not so well with the built-in speakers. It’s almost like the laptop thinks the headphones are still plugged in even when they’re not. Do you have some headphones you can try?

My advanced volume control (brought up via right-click on the speaker icon in the tray, XP) has a button to bring up separate settings for the individual speakers. On one occasion they got out of sync with the master volume setting and I got no sound until, after much frustration, I checked the speaker volumes and fixed them.

Try checking that.

Did the sound work properly before or has it always been like this? Are these new speakers?

There are two types of computer speakers, those that have a built in amplifier and those that don’t. If you have the type that don’t, then they expect the sound card to have the amplifier. If your sound card has a line out (or you are using the line out instead of the speaker out) then you will get very quiet sound, exactly as described in the OP. If the speakers are plugged into the wrong jack, that’s easy to fix. If neither the sound card nor the speakers have an amplifier, that’s a bit harder. You need to come up with an amplifier from somewhere (probably cheapest just to buy speakers with a built in amplifier).

If these are amplified speakers, make sure they are getting power from wherever they are designed to get power from. Some have a little wall wart power supply. Others use a USB port for power.

If that’s not the issue, then make sure the speakers are plugged into the correct jack on the back, and if your sound card has a software control panel of some sort (typically accessed via the windows control panel or a small icon in the icon tray on the desktop) check to see if that particular jack is configurable, and if so, how it is configured.

Is there a volume control on the speakers themselves? Make sure it’s turned up.