The sound on my computer keeps going in and out, for no apparent reason. It’ll work fine for an hour, cut out for hours or days, pop back on for a few seconds, then go away, go off for a few seconds, return for 3 days, etc.
I’ve checked all wiring and connections, run the standard trouble shooting checks, done the advanced checks, and nothing corrects it.
There’s no rhyme or reason for why it cuts in or out that I can identify. I can be composing a reply here on the SDMB and all of a sudden it kicks in. Or out.
Running Windows XP, Internet Explorer. The problem occurred on the previous edition of IE along with the current one.
Do you have the option to try plugging a different set into it?
Also, onboard sound, or sound card?
If it’s a sound card, you may want to try reseating it.
Ooh, another thing. If there’s a different jack for headphones it would be interesting to know if the headphone jack works when the speakers don’t.
If you don’t have another set of speakers, can you plug them into something else?
A bad cable would be my first guess, but you’ve checked that. A bad driver or driver conflict wouldn’t normally kick in and out like that. If it happens right in the middle of doing something without starting or ending any programs, it doesn’t sound like an application error.
So that kind of leaves hardware error. A bad (or going bad) sound card. You might swap in a cheapie card and see what happens. That would tell you for sure if it is the card.
Assuming the speakers connector on your system is the standard 1/8" style, you could plug it in to a Walkman or internetPod or whatever hip audio device you happen to have.
I’d also suspect hardware over software; if you’d still like to test that a bit, a Live CD is going to be about as far from your current drivers as possible. (Potential downside: if it doesn’t work for a bit right away, you wouldn’t know if it was a configuration vs. hardware problem)
I have an old computer, old speakers and they do that. It is slow growing corrosion in my jack connection. I just pull it out and reinsert it like bunnies going at it for a few seconds and that scrapes clean the metal of the contact points and I’m good to go for a few months until I need to do it again.
Newer contacts and tighter jacks prolly will do better but my way is very cheap…
OK, new sound problem! I now can play CDs, streaming audio, and the like on my Windows Media player just fine (I couldn’t before, or rather only intermittently). But the rest of the computer is now silent: No bells or whistles, or opening or closing noises. No sound on Youtube video clips. (These features were working intermittently as described above just the other day).
And when I open the control panel and click on my audio and sounds devices button, and go to the sounds and audio devices properties, under the Volume tab, it says I have no audio device!!! So I can’t turn up the device volume or change speaker settings. All the while I listen to Pink Floyd playing in my CD drive!
Well, have you tried uninstalling the driver, rebooting and letting windows finding it again? Also, in device manager you can go to View–Show hidden devices and ensure “beep” is not turned off.
Do you get any errors when rebooting? MS recently release a security update that caused a problem with realtek sound drivers.
They don’t work when plugged into the computer either. :mad: