My Computer Has No Sound

Knowledgebase

Internet Generation Online Support > Internet Generation Support Requests > Knowledgebase

My Computer Has No Sound

Solution If you are not getting any sound from your computer, check things in the following order. I am assuming you are using windows XP, to resolve problems with windows Vista do the same, but things are in different places.

Check your speakers are working, unplug from the back of the computer and try it on something else.

Check you are putting it into the correct socket, usually its light green. If you are anthing but certain, check your documentation. Sometimes you have 2 sockets one on the front and one of the back. Try both.

Check the sound is not disabled and the volume is turned up, goto windows start button - control panel - sound, speach and audio devices - sound and audio devices - turn the volume up to the maximum and untick the mute if ticked.

If the volume and mute is greyed out, you don't have a sound driver installed skip to the last step.

In the same window click advanced, check "volume control" and "wave" is turned up to the max and that neither are disabled.

Goto windows start button - all programs - windows media player. Play an MP3 or insert a CD and play. There is another volume control and mute on media player, make sure the volume is up to the maximum, and you press the little speaker to mute and unmute the sound.

On the now playing tab, right click on the centre and set the visulation to bars and waves, this should show some bars bouncing up and down in time with the music, this just confirms that we are actually playing something.

Failing this we need to look at the hardware, some people have more than one sound card on the computer, and indication of this is having more than group of sound sockets on the rear of the computer.

If you have more than one sound card if makes this very confusing, its best to to disable one if you can, if your up to it remove the extra card from the computer, alternatively you can usually disable the onboard sound using the bios menus.

If you cant remove or disable one of them change which soundcard windows is using, in the same sound and audio devices we were using before, goto audio and change the default device dropdown, you should expect there to be more than one option indicating windows has a second sound card that can be used, choose the other one and restart windows (usually its not necessary to restart windows but you never know, best to restart) redo all the steps again. If you only see one then prehaps one of the cards is either not configured, not working or has been disabled as above.

Try changing your speaker between the front and rear ports and/or the second sound card if you have them and repeat all these steps again.

Be aware some computer have additional software for controlling the sound, provided by the sound card manufacture, which i've not talked about. These are many and varied, I can't give you guideance on this except to say, check again any volume controls are turned up, check for things that might be disabled, turn off all effects, some have digital outputs its not uncommon for the sound to be set to digital output, in which case the sound usually won't come out of the normal speaker outputs. If there is any default option button press this and check its not on digital output again. If you fiddle with some stuff here you might want to redo one or all of the steps above again. You may find info about the software they provided on the manufactures web site.

Next we need to look at drivers, so right click my computer and click manage, in the left half choose device manager, you should see sound video and games controller section, press the plus to expand, its normal to see audio and video codecs, also audio and video legacy devices, and media control device. You should have one additonal item in there, in my case its high defination audio device but this will vary depending on what hardware you have. This will be your sound card. If you don't see anything else then skip down to installing the device. Right click and press uninstall. Then click the icon of the computer with the magnifing glass on the tool bar, windows should reinstall the sound card. Now restart the computer. Again you may need to repeat one or all of the above steps again. If you see any yellow exclaimation marks on device, this means there is a problem with the device, double click on the device to read the message, you need to solve the exclaimation mark problem before continuing.

If all that fails, you will need to install the device with drivers from the manufacturer. You will need to find this. The best place to look is the support section on the manufactures web site. Once downloaded, follow the step above to remove the device but don't do the mangifing glass step or any further. Read the step above for reference if you haven't already. Install the software provided by the manufacture, follow any instructions they provide, you should see your device appear in the device list, resolve any explaination marks. If nothing appears or your sofware won't install, either you haven't used the correct software, the hardware is faulty or you haven't followed the install process correctly refer to manufacture instructions. Once reinstalled reboot the computer and repeat one or all the above instructions.

If you still can't get it to work then it may be best to call a computer repair company, I can't think of anything else to do. You may have faulty hardware, you may need windows reinstalled, or you need someone with more experineced to help you find the problem.

Was this article helpful? yes / no

Article details

Article ID:	19
Category:	Knowledgebase
Date added:	2009-12-27 01:48:43
Views:	71
Rating (Votes):	(1)

<< Go back