In the list of devices in Device Manager, are there any with a little yellow warning triangle and something like “Unknown Device”?
And, back in Super Basic Land… have you checked to see that the volume is turned up? Right-click on the little speaker icon in the task bar tray. Make sure all the volume settings are set at least midway, if not full. (You can tweak them later).
No speaker icon in the tray? You don’t have a valid sound card, with drivers, installed. Windows won’t know it has a sound card until it sees valid drivers.
“Audio codecs” is definitely NOT what you’re looking for. These are software modules that handle different audio formats like mp3, wma, etc., and are way upstream of the audio hardware.
If you have no entries under “Sound, Video, and Game Controllers”, then you either have no audio hardware or it’s not set up. The latter is far more likely, since most motherboards have minimal audio hardware built-in; additional “soundcards” or “audio interfaces” are added for better audio.
In Device Manager, try “Action -> Scan for hardware changes” and see if anything pops up for audio.
Also (though, if you have no audio devices registered, this is unlikely to be helpful), in Control Panel, look for “Sound” and click that. See if you find anything useful there. If not, tell us what tabs you see. I’m on Win7 and IIRC, XP is rather different.
Another thing to try is to open up your computer and see what’s connected to the jack you’re using. Usually, there’s one panel attached to the big motherboard with all the connections for audio etc. If the mic & speaker jacks are on a separate slot, see if they’re connected to a different board. Let us know what you see.
Finally, if there’s a speaker icon in systray (usually, lower right corner of desktop), right click it and select “volume control” and fiddle with that.
Chances are very good that your computer has some kind of audio hardware, but for some reason it’s not set up correctly. I can’t remember the last time I saw a mobo without audio.
What are you using to test whether or not you have sound? A couple of years ago we went through something similar with Twickster. After a long thread getting into all sorts of obscure possible problems, none of which seemed to help, it eventually turned out that she was testing for whether or not she had sound exclusively by trying to play Youtube videos, and she had all videos on Youtube muted by default. There was nothing wrong with her computer’s sound system at all.
Well, something is definitely bogus and I don’t see any way to diagnose it without someone competent on PC guts taking a look.
Many cases have headphone/mic jacks built into the front that do nothing unless connected to the proper point on a motherboard with onboard audio, or a sound card. That you say you have audio jacks on the rear is puzzling - the only thing I can thing is that the correct driver is not loaded, or you have an audio-jack plate that isn’t connected to anything internally.
To recap:
[ol]
[li]Look for a “sound device” in Device Manager.[/li][li]Look for a flagged “unknown device” in DM.[/li][li]Go to Control Panel/Sound and poke around to see if you can find the volume controls etc. for an audio output device.[/li][li]None of the above? You don’t have a sound card, or motherboard sound, or it’s faulty at the hardware level. Devices always show up somewhere if they are connected and active; if no drivers are loaded Windows sees them but doesn’t know what they are - hence “unknown device.”[/li][/ol]
Get someone with a little experience to peek into it. It’s a really simple thing if you know what you’re looking for/at.
Are you using the headphone jack at the front of the computer or the one at the back? Take a look at the back and make sure your speakers are plugged into that one. It will have a green surround. I’m assuming you have stereo speakers here. This is just in case the socket on the front is broken.
Motherboard sound systems are usually made by Realtek, so can you go into Device Manager and look for Realtek there?
There is another possibility that occurs to me: do you use a HDMI cable to connect your monitor to the computer? Because HDMI also carries sound and your PC maybe sending the sound to the monitor. So check your monitor for speakers or an audio out.
For reference, in Device Manager I have a section labelled Sound, video and game controllers. Under that there are three entries: Nvidia High Definition Audio (see above), Plantronics Wireless Audio (my headphones), and Realtek High Definition Audio (the onboard chipset).
If you have both Nvidia High Definition Audio and Realtek, plug your speakers into the back of the PC, then go into Control Panel and click on Sound. Under the Playback tab, select the Realtek device and click Set Default. Then click on Configure and Properties in turn to set up your speakers properly.
What you want to do there is direct the sound to the correct outputs.
Probably disable the incorrect outputs so they don’t keep getting “chosen”.
The reason there would be “invisible” outputs would be.
HDMI carries sound… HDMI video drivers these days acts as a sound card … it might be sending the sound the monitor, which is sending it to a 3.5 mm socket ?
IF you have a video card with HDMI output, thats probably a sound card … and its a hidden trap in that you may have sound all sorted out, and then when you plugin in an HDMI screen… all of a sudden sound is gone, with no warning ? …
Digital outputs on the card or motherboard. Fibre optic or coax connectors
So there is a complete list
device manager … check for yellow , red devices and check under “sound” for disabled devices.
“sound” widget in control panel … Can also disable sound hardware and also steers the sound inputs and outputs to the correct hardware … basically you want to disable the others and enable the one you want
Windows volume control.
Typically Each application then has its own volume control
Hardware volume controls… Mother’s black laptop had a black dial with black writing … my point is that it was hard to find.
You just need a screwdriver. Usually just a couple of screws, pop the side of the case off and have a look at the bit where the headphone/speaker jack is. If you could tell us what’s there, or better post a pic, then that’d be useful.
Some older systems had BIOS settings that could be used to disable on-board hardware. For instance, if your computer came with a built-in serial port but you wanted to install a card with a better serial port, you could turn off the on-board one, and Windows or other OSes wouldn’t even see it.
It might be worth checking your BIOS settings (look for a message when booting saying what key to press). See if there’s anything there about sound being disabled. Maybe your computer used to have a fancy sound card, but whoever rebuilt it didn’t include that, and never reenabled the onboard sound.
If you can tell us the computer’s manufacturer and model number (perhaps on a label on the back or bottom of the computer), you might get more specific help.
Click on Start - Run and type in **dxdiag **. When it finishes loading, click on its “Save all info” button which writes out a file dxdiag.txt . Open that in Notepad, looks for the section that starts [sound devices]. Paste that section (only) in a post here.
You have sound hardware (which you know because of the presence of audio jacks) but Windows doesn’t recognize it. If you know the model of the motherboard (the largest circuit board inside the case, to which everything else is attached) finding the missing audio drivers will be easy. Open the case- you can’t break anything by doing so. Look for a big number-letter combination printed somewhere obvious on the motherboard. It’ll be something like AV8X-X. Bring that combo back here and we’ll link to the driver download on the manufacturer’s website.
This is assuming you have onboard sound. If the audio is an add-in card (which will be obvious once you open the case), the solution will be similar. Find a name/number, drop it off here.
Don’t forget Bosda mentions in the OP it’s a rebuilt computer. Who knows what components are missing.
Don’t worry about opening the case, Bosda, I’m not computer (especially not hardware) savvy, either, but have certainly opened the cases on a few computers to add memory (after googling what the heck to even buy and what to do with it once it got here). It really would help to open the case and see if there’s anything attached to the plugs in the inside. I think it would be obvious to you once you look. You can also Google for instructions, I’ve learned some very useful stuff, and you really won’t break anything by just taking a look and/or a picture.
Do you plug the speakers in on audio jacks in the front of the machine, or the back of the machine?
If the audio jacks are on the back of the machine, can you tell me where they are in proximity to the other connectors (e.g. USB, Ethernet, etc)? Is there a chance you can snap a digital photo and post it somewhere for us to have a look?
Someone said that we think you have audio hardware because there are audio jacks. I’m not entirely convinced because it is possible to have a case that provides audio jacks (often on the front) that you have to connect to headers (pins) on a sound card or motherboard.
If we know the jacks are either on the motherboard, on a sound card that’s plugged into the motherboard, or simply part of the case, we’ll have an easier go of this.
One last super-basic thing to look for. After clicking on the “Hardware” tab, try clicking on the “Volume” tab (if it’s there). There should be a button labeled “Speaker Volume”. If it’s there, click on it and check all volume sliders. Move them all to maximum volume and try generating some sound.
Then you can check that the system is making sounds by clicking on the “Sounds” tab. Click on any event that has a speaker icon to its left. The file name of that sound will appear at the bottom of the panel. To its right is a button with a small triangle on it. Press that to play the sound. If there is a problem, you may get some kind of error message and a way to start XP’s sound problem diagnosis (which may or may not be helpful).
I didn’t read the entire thread, but if you just take a picture of the back of the computer and post it to the internet we can tell you if you have a sound card a lot quicker then all this back and forth. It’s pretty easy to tell just by the location of the jacks.
