Sound Problem.

[SlappyMcGee]

I'm running Vista 32-bit Professional whatever on my Toshiba Satellite A210 laptop.

The other night, as I was going to sleep, I put my Zune software on and listened to the entirety of Blink-182's Blink-182. I fell asleep listening to the album, and by the time I woke up, there was no more sound in my computer.

I'd been meaning to reformat because I wanted to dual-boot Kubuntu, so I figured if I was having a driver issue, this would be killing two birds with one stone.

However, after my reformat, I continue to not get any sound out of my speakers. If I go into "sounds" and look at the status, it shows the bar moving up and down, as if the computer genuinely believed sound was playing. I've checked the device manager and noticed no problems.

Finally, and here's the freak part, plugging earphones into my earphone jack does give me sound, but it is horribly distorted and crackly.

Please help! :?

[乳头的早餐谷物]

I'd first try and determine what the source of the problem is, by trying the speakers on a different computer, trying different speakers on the same computer, and ideally doing the same with the sound card.

[mattk210]

I had exactly the same problem. Never resolved it properly though, just lived with it until I got a new mobo which fixed it. My drivers could interact with the speakers -- they detected whether it was plugged in. Probably a motherboard fault (I've forgotten which specific model I had).

For me it occured after a reformat, with which I was trying to repair a broken MBR. Has nothing to do with sound though, so I don't think that has anything to do with it.

[SlappyMcGee]

Toshiba just told me that my sound card probably melted.

Good them.

[smartalco]

Toshiba just told me that my sound card probably melted.

That is about what I was going to say.

[wedgie]

Yeah that, or you have broken speakers and crackly headphones. :P

[SlappyMcGee]

Someone could turn me to some quality USB based sound cards, then?

[Tanner]

Cheap and easy?

[wedgie]

Wait wait wait. If you are not getting sound out of your speakers but you are getting sound out of your headphones, albeit crackly, then surely this means that by a process of elimination you can say that your speakers are broken. As sound coming out of the headphones means that the soundcard is still outputting something. From this, you can then decipher that the soundcard is indeed borked and causing the crackly sound in the headphones or that the soundcard is working and that the headphones are a bit broken and causing the crackly sound.

Simple but faultless analysis.

N.B. This is also assuming that you tried the headphone and speakers from the same headphone/audio socket.

[SlappyMcGee]

Well, the speakers are integrated into the laptop. So, I mean, the sound card has to have something going on if it can shoot sound through the slot for earphones. (Which aren't crackly, so says my Zune and Dad's computer).

Maybe the sound card has just lost it's connection to the speakers and has a bad connection with the headphone slot.

Or, maybe the headphone slot runs dr
irectly to the Motherboard. Hahaha.

[t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư]

If your headphones connect via USB, then it's its own sound device and the laptop's sound card is irrelevant;
if your headphones don't use USB, the problem is your speakers.

[wedgie]

Oh, I didn't think about the speakers being the onboard ones. So that changes everything I said.

[Exüberance]

Vista

That might be your problem!

Seriously though, it might part of the problem considering 95% of my computer problems are caused by Vista and the other 5% I don't know what caused it, but it seems obvious to me that your speakers themselves- not the drivers or Vista- are broken. But before you give up hope:

I had a similar problem. I have a laptop. I have Vista. (Windows 7, please come out soon! I'm tired of stupid Vista).
No matter what I did, everything sounded like it was... well it's really hard to explain. Kind of like it was doing Mono sound in Stero, but not really. Kind of echoy without actually echoing if that makes sense. It just sounded... wrong. I plugged actual speakers in. Fine.

My solution? Shut down the computer. Start up the computer.



I guess a sound driver failed to load properly for some reason. Maybe it was HP. Maybe it was Vista. Maybe it was just a fluke. Haven't had that problem again though.