Sounds

[boofhead]

I have a Dell with Vista and an inbuilt audio controller, HD. It makes no sound. Device Manager says it is working normally, and I tried disabling it and reloading the driver to no avail. Windows media player says: " Windows Media Player cannot play the file because there is a problem with your sound device. There might not be a sound device installed on your computer, it might be in use by another program, or it might not be functioning properly."
I tried a USB headset and it is recognised but still no sounds, normal computer sounds nor music, Utube etc.
There is a audio plug in the front of the machine and it does not work there either. I tried two different speakers, checked the power etc.
Volumes all set, no mute on, green lights on the speakers.
Same message with no speakers plugged in.
Suspect the sound controller is bad and might have to put in a new sound card since the original is on the MB.
Any ideas that will save me time and effort, anything I can check or set? Would appreciate the help, I am learning to really hate computers.

[Parapunter]

Navigate to device manager, find the sound device in the list, right click and select uninstall & then right click the computer name at the top of the list and click scan for hardware changes. The machine should recognise it & bring it back to life.

Note: Should is an over used word when applied to confusers.

[BOAC]

Check the sound is not disabled in BIOS. I think that is F2 in Dell during boot?

[boofhead]

Thanks, tried both of them to no avail. I was hoping I had been missing something simple. The card was working two days ago and is not working now. Tried different speakers, USB headset, everything I could think of but it says the card is not working even though Device Manager says it is.
Computers are supposed to save us time but I spend dozens of hours every year working on the things. Of course with 8 computers in the house for 6 people...
If I add a sound card it should be easy to disable the card on the MB but it worries me that I cannot get anything from the USB headset. Possible that until I turn off the MB sound card it will not allow it to work, or must there be a good sound card to allow the USB connection?

[Saab Dastard]

Have you added / changed anything else on the system recently?

I recall several years ago that sounds stopped working - turned out that the modem (yes, it was several years ago) had installed itself as the default sound device!

SD

[Parapunter]

I had same problem years ago & tried reseating the soundcard, reinstalling the drivers etc. etc. Turned out I'd turned the volume down on the seperate control & hadn't noticed.

Always the wetware!

[boofhead]

I ran the Malware Bytes program, it came up good. I used msconfig and dropped a few programs that were not needed, but made sure the sound was left alone. I went back after and reset the programs I had stopped and that made no difference. Does the message mean anything? I does not seem to matter if I have a speaker plugged in or not, the error message comes up on MS Media Player when I select music or utube, and I get no sounds either. I do get the beep at bootup, but not the Windows welcome tune etc.

[BOAC]

Apologies, boofhead, but can we go back to basics? I assume Vista has the same 'Volume Control' as XP? What settings do you see in 'Options'/'Properties'?

[boofhead]

The computer insists that all is well, even though the sounds don't work. I rolled the computer back to the day just prior to when I ran MWB and the card is now working again. So something in malware bytes must have caused the sound card to be cut out, or it might have been one of the automatic updates by MS. I have had other problems with those auto updates on other computers, so I suspect that might be the case here.
Anyway, thanks for the help, appreciated as usual. I will keep an eye on it, since whatever caused the problem might come back next time the computer does the update that failed last time. (what a convoluted sentence!)

[McGreaser]

I have a sort of similar problem. Whilst listening to music on my lappy, sometimes the volume just winds down to zero. And when l raise it up again it winds down to zero. Any help

[boofhead]

I am not making progress. I took the machine to an expert and paid for a diagnosis. He said the hard drive was going TU. He said the part that ran the sound was bad, and more problems would be expected. I bought a new drive, mirrored the data and it also does not provide sound. I don't know if that is because the HDD fault was mirrored. I am running diagnostics right now, and the sound card comes up good on that, makes the right noises in analog, but I don't know if it works on surround sound mode because I don't have a surround sound kit to plug in. Also don't have a headset so cannot check that either, but will assume that it is OK. Never mind, eh.
But still cannot make it work when it should.
My next step is to load an OS into the new drive, maybe able to use the disks that came with the machine, or else I will load one of my old Windows 98/XP OS for a trial.
I used to build my own computers but cannot compete on price any more, but if they only run for a year then crap out, what is the use?

[green granite]

The first thing to do is download the latest driver from the sound card manufacture, and re-install it.

[Simonta]

Boofhead. It was working, after you rolled back, and now it isn't. What did you do in the intervening period?

Your hard drive may have been failing (did you buy the new hard drive from the person who told you the old one needed replacing?) but I suspect that you were sold a dummy. Put the old drive back into the PC, enable SMART monitoring in your BIOS if not already there and then use Windows to check the drive. It will tell you if indeed the drive is failing or simply has some bad sectors (which is normal).

the part that ran the sound was bad

I'm afraid that is BS. There is a remote possibility that a failing hard drive could corrupt the cards' driver but that would not cause the problems you describe. It is also remotely possible that when you cloned the drive, the corruption was also cloned. You can eliminate this easily by uninstalling the card in device manager and select "delete driver files". Then scan for new hardware. The drivers will be reinstalled.

[boofhead]

I did all those things, to no avail. I have been running diagnostics for two days, nothing comes up. I have two drives, although only one will work at a time to run the OS (Vista). I mirrored the drives, did not cure the problem. The old one would run the Wireless receiver (Linksys) but not sound, the new one would run sound but not the wireless.
I reloaded Vista in the old drive, it now runs sound but no wireless. I reloaded Vista in the new drive, it runs sound but no wireless. Neither one allows me to even see the wireless card (PCI) when I plug it in, it does not appear in Device Manager, so I cannot reload the driver.
The computer does not automatically recognize the card. I cannot find the original CD but I have a copy of the latest driver. With the new drive, before I reloaded Vista, I had power at the Wireless card, but now I don't.
I hope the sound problem is gone, but the computer is pretty useless without the wireless.
Each drive, when running as primary, has a different set of devices showing. One drive shows some network (but not the wireless card), the other has the LAN adaptor yellowed out and will not allow me to update.
I was thinking I could move the wireless to the network adaptor slot, since I do not use that (there are only two PCI slots).
Maybe buy a new wireless card?

[Mr Optimistic]

interupts ?

don't know how to do it in vista but are the wireless and sound sharing an interupt ? Also, does vista still support dxdiag ?

[boofhead]

That's a good point. I will check it. Thanks.

[Parapunter]

If you suspect the wireless card, try it in another machine before parting with money.

[tony draper]

I had a load of trouble with a on board Realtek HD sound chip a few years back,just stopped working for no apparent reason,bit a bit of googling and found it was not a uncommon problem,it required a download from microsoft of a HD bus driver.
Dunno why this suddenly happened but I downloaded the recommended file and suddenly I had sound again.
Try this website.
Download Microsoft UAA Bus Driver for High Definition Audio Driver for Windows NT / Windows 2K / Windows XP - Softpedia

[Skypilot]

I had a Dell Dimension 8300 (though running Windows XP) that also did exactly this - for no explained reason the sound would suddenly stop working. Downloading the appropriate device driver from the Dell web site and re-installing it was the only way I ever found to get it working again.

[P.Pilcher]

A few years ago, I ran Windoze update which advertised that a new updated sound driver was available (I have forgotton which sound system was installed on my mobo). I clicked on same and was rewarded with the new driver installed - and no sound. Nothing I could do would restore same until I used the "rollback" facility after which normal service was resumed. Now if you had automatic updating enabled??

P.P.