[fried]

I got up this morning and turned on my computer - no sound.

Last night it was working fine and has been since I bought the computer 6 months ago. I normally connect up to an external amp via the headphone jack, it doesn't work with either the external or internal speakers.

The computer is Windows 7, which was pre-installed.

When I click on the speaker icon on the task bar it should be at 80%, the internal speakers are 'VIA high definition audio', I've checked the drivers and the auto-detection software says they are up to date.

Any ideas? Before I go crazy sitting in silence.

[robertostallioni]

'somebody say something?

guess not.

[Bubba]

Do you have any audio apps that can control the sound? In the past I seem to remember I'd set winamp to mute and it overrode the windows volume controls. I think even the Flash plugin (e.g. on youtube) can do this.

[stevej]

They tend to mess with the windows volume control don't they? I'd have thought the application-specific controls of win7 would prevent apps being badly behaved. Sounds like it's probably fried broken imo.

You could try running a linux boot disk/bootable usb stick, this will boot into something totally separate to whatever weirdness may or may not be happening on your laptop. It should figure out the drivers, it'll have an internal thingy and afaik they're all the same. If this won't play cds/sounds etc. it's almost certainly hardware. In that case you can get usb sound 'card' dongles for not a lot of money.

[Bubba]

Not totally sure in Win 7 - certainly used to happen in XP.

Quick enough to test though so worth a try.

[fried]

It was just trying to make me look stupid. I shut it down for about the tenth time and for no apparent reason the sound came back.

Not that I'm complaining just baffled!

[slackline]

That can happen when using M$-Windows  ???