Baffled highly-experienced PC user.... No Sound, yet no apparent problems... !!??

eskimo

Windows XP Home Edition with Service Pack 3
Dell Dimension 4700

I'm a highly experienced PC, Windows and Windows XP user, and this one has me totally baffled. The Windows Help program is absolutely useless, as the Microsoft website often is, and I've found nowhere online at all the can help me figure this out.

Yesterday, my PC was working perfectly. I was listening to music, both CDs and MP3s, and the system sounds were there as always.

Today I turned on the PC and there is NO SOUND. There is no sound from the PC speakers or from the headphones. All of my drivers are there and are working properly and are up-to-date. Device Manager lists all of my drivers, and they are all listed as Enabled and Working Properly. There are no driver conflicts either. I have attached a screen-grab of my device manager, as well as the volume control panel.

In the Setup screen, I have the Integrated Audio card set as "On."

I'm at my wit's end trying to figure this out, all help appreciated :-)

ethernet

Any loose cables? Your volumes aren't exactly low there either. Odd! Do headphones work?

Baraboo

See if you downloaded a recent windows update to do with hardware and if so roll back driver. If not try getting the latest drivers off the dell site and uninstall and reinstall with the new drivers.

Capt'n Midnight

system restore is a good option for weird stuff or stuff that you could make worse by messing around - system restore may also say what was changed recently too

eskimo

I didn't install or update anything in between the time the sound was working perfectly and the time it suddenly stopped working.

I just tried it again there. The headphone jack at the front of the pc is now suddenly providing sound again. However the speaker socket at the back of the pc is still providing no sound at all.
:-/
This one really has me going a little bit insane!!!

guil

maybe the soundcard is on the way out

Hagar

Any chance your cable is plugged into the integrated m/b output jack and not your sound card jack?
I've done this.

eskimo

Haha. Believe me, all the dumbest things you can think of, I've probably done them and spent hours wondering why something wasn't working. But this time, I've exhausted all options. Looks like it probably is the sound card. The computer is over 4 years old after all.

I'll ring Dell in the morning, see if they can figure it for me. Next step is figuring out how to take the PC apart and install a new sound card because while my experience with computer software is high enough to know what's wrong and what's not, I've almost no idea what to do when it comes to the inside of a PC! Eeek!

Capt'n Midnight

if the card is ancient then it might have a volume control
otherwise it might be a doggy cable, wiggle the cable at each end to see if it comes/goes again

Have you a PCI sound card or an intergrated one ?

If you have a PCI sound card then enter the Bios screen on boot up and set the integrated audio to "OFF".

If you only have an intergrated one did you lose sound after SP3 was installed, if so I suggest you uninstall SP3, uninstall the sound driver and reboot the PC.

Ginger

Believe it or not what can happen is that the card thinks something is plugged in via the headphones and it doesnt output through the speakers.. that one baffled me for ages until I dusted everything down one evening and suddenly I had sound again..