The sound on my PC inexplicably stopped working. I run Vista and my desktop audio manager says everything is working correctly, my speakers are fine and my headset is good but we tried other speakers and other headsets and got nothing.
I had a tech savvy friend look at it he couldn’t figure it out.
Can anyone help me? Is there a downloadable program that can check everything?
I had this problem when I first got Vista- it seems my webcam made the sound stop working. I didn’t figure this out until I’d spent weeks searching for the cause and even sent my computer back to the factory, only to be told everything was fine with it. Could that be it?
OK, I can get the test sound to work in audio manager for both the speakers and headset but I can’t get sound on the internet or games.
Have you installed new software recently? I don’t have Vista in front of me, but there should be a Device Manager in the Control panel. Find you audio device(s). There may be diagnostics there, if not, you should have the option to reload drivers.
I’m on Windows 7 here, but it should be similar. Go to Start / Control Panel / Sounds. You should get a window with Playback / Recording / Sounds / Communications tabs. Select Playback (if not already selected by default). You’ll see a list of the audio devices Windows thinks are installed. Click on the appropriate device (if you’re not sure which, try them all one at a time) and click the “Set Default” button.
If that fixes it, the likely cause is that you added hardware (for example, a webcam) that added itself to this list as the new default device, thus routing the sound to the wrong place.
Update:
In control panel under sound I can switch my ‘playback’ to speakers and I can get sound on the internet and games, but it sucks. Typically I went with ‘realtek digital output’ and it says that it’s currently working expect that it isn’t. It tells me I have the latest drivers but I get nothing.
If you haven’t added hardware, it’s probably a software change.
You can try to get the latest drivers anyway. I don’t remember if Vista allows you to revert. Or look for alternatives. Try googling ‘realtek digital output’ to see if there’s more information. Also, check all your devices. Anything you installed recently may have screwed things up. It took weeks before I could get my old XP audio working after downloading a driver so I could listen to Don Giovanni. I had to keep installing and updating drivers until some particular order worked.
You can also try a system restore, but I don’t recall if that will affect drivers, but it may uninstall things creating a problem. You should check the installed software in the control panel too. See if anything was installed recently that you don’t recognize. Check it carefully so you don’t uninstall something you need. Registry entries could in theory have an effect, but I don’t have a particular registry cleaning tool to suggest. Maybe others have some info in that regard.
Do you have digital speakers? It’s unlikely that you do - in which case “digital output” isn’t the right choice. Take a look at the socket on the PC that your speakers plug into - it will likely be a pale green one. If it is a yellow one, then you probably do have digital speakers.
What do you mean by the sound sucks? Low volume, distorted, or…? Some sound cards can be configured for different signal levels on the output jack - for directly plugging in un-amplified speakers or headphones. Unfortunately, configuring those options almost always requires a sound-card-vendor-provided utility (not part of the standard stuff that comes with Windows), so I can’t offer much advice there.
Good point. Do you think he could loaded the digital driver somehow? Or recall if he can revert?
Chances are that the same driver handles both digital and analog output and presents both as distinct devices to Windows.
This sort of thing is why I suggest checking the config and cables before messing around with drivers, uninstalling software, or the registry. It’s easy to make the problem worse (and harder to fix, since you don’t know where you started from).
Yeah, I think my first list of steps was in reverse order. Sorry Sitnam, did you check the sound icon yet?
Can you hear anything? Maybe you’re deaf.