ironblue

Hello,
I have a quick question. I have searched the forums and tried the various suggestions mentioned, but have not been able to resolve this issue. Help me Obi-Wan, you're my only hope.

My Dell Precision M90 Laptop will not play audio out of the spakers. Audio will come from the headphone jack with no issues.

Setup:

• XP SP3
• 2GB RAM
• Intel Core2 (2.00Ghz)
• SigmaTel Audio

Attempted solutions:

• Deleted device and reinstalled driver
• Tried 3rd party drivers
• Checked audio in dxDiag (could not hear through speakers)
• Unchecked "PC Spk Mute" checkbox in Volume dialog box
• Device Manager shows device installed correctly and all components functioning and checked to "Play Audio"
• All volume levels set at max
• All Mute boxes have been unchecked
• Hard "Mute" and "Volume" buttons on front of chassis have been pushed (they respond perfectly with headphones plugged into jack)
• All playback devices have SigmaTel device as the primary playback mapper.

Any suggestions apart from reinstalling the OS would be great. I really need the speakers to work for my work. Thanks!

TriggerFinger

Try reinstalling chipset drivers before you reinstall the audio drivers. Also make sure this is not a hardware problem. Have you checked the condition of the speakers and if they are plugged in well (i.e. cable condition, etc)?

Also try uninstall audio drivers in Device Manager. With that also uninstall any Sigmatel or audio related programs listed in ADD/REMOVE. Reboot and let Windows recognize your audio controllers using default drivers. Sometimes these speakers work without the Sigmatel drivers... just worth a try. If this does not work, install the chipset and then followed by the audio drivers.

Another thing to try may sound far fetched. Use another operating system on live CD. I use PCLinuxOS (try this if it works for your laptop). With this running, try to test your audio (with PCLinuxOS you can still surf the web if you are wired to a router so you can try YouTube). This will rule out Windows or drivers.

Post back what you find out.

ironblue

That's a good idea about the Live CD. I may try that later this week with Ubuntu or somesuch. The thought about chipset drivers is good too, though, I didn't notice this issue until after I installed a crappy open-source white noise generator. I've uninstalled it since, but I get the feeling it's that that's screwed with soundcard.

ironblue

I gave up on the chipset drivers. They started corrupting as I installed the various drivers, so I eventfully just rolled back to a system restore point and all is well. Thanks fior your help!

TriggerFinger

Thank you for the update. I am glad you got it all sorted.