I have a friend with a windows computer that suddenly stopped having sound. I went over and did the obvious thing. Not muted, volume up to max, looked uncomprehendingly (mostly) though the “Sounds and audio devices” on the control panel and asked if the speakers were plugged (they were internal). Does anyone have any idea what can cause this. It is sudden; the sounds were there yesterday. My friends wife is studying Spanish and is linked to a coupld of Spanish language radio stations, so she is accustomed to doing this.
Nothing scientific or factual to answer with, but I had the same thing happen a couple of years ago. The only solution for me was to get a new sound card. Cleared it right up.
I didn’t get the exact solution but in another thread this was mentioned as happening due to one of the windows updates being installed.
ETA: The thread link
You could try reinstalling the sound card’s driver. (If necessary, download it from the card manufacturer’s web site.)
This is how I typically fix it, or if that doesn’t work I reload windows. Has happened multiple times on kids computers, always got it back with one of these two solutions.
OS? If it’s Vista, check the mixer (which has individual volume controls for any programs currently accessing the sound card). Vista consistently lowers the mixer settings for all my programs over time–eventually to 0, where that program is effectively muted. I have been unable to determine why this happens, or how to stop it; I’ve resigned myself to occasionally firing up the mixer and re-setting programs’ volume back to where I want it.
No, it is XP. Another strike against Vista.
This happened to me a while back. I even tried installing a new sound card (as the existing sound hardware was part of the motherboard). Even the new sound card (confirmed working via another PC) didn’t make a peep. I eventually had to reformat and reinstall the OS (WinXP). That solved the problem. After that, both the MB Sound card and the add-on sound card worked.
When I put in a Google chrome browser on my older computer, I lost sound until I went to Adobe and got the Shockwave flash plugin.
That’s another possibility.
Has the computer been rebooted since this happened?
My laptop will periodically decide it doesn’t need to play sounds. If I try playing something in iTunes I’ll even get an error message. If I disable the sound card and re-enable it, I get told I need to reboot to have the change take effect.
Of course, simply rebooting works without fiddling with the sound card settings.
Normally I just hibernate at night and reboot it in the morning (it’s a laptop that travels to / from work so leaving it on is not an option). I figure after a while it gets tired of that and decides to force me to do reboot.