Lost my sound and have run out of things to check.

[gnason]

I am running XP 64 Professional on a EVGA 141-BL-E757-TR LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX X58 SLI LE Intel Motherboard with an Intel I7 920 CPU and 12 GB OCZ Gold (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600. My sound card is a bluegears b-Enspirer 7.1 Channels PCI Interface and a BOSE Companion 3 Multimedia Speaker System.

I have assured that all sound and power cables are connected, the mute is not on in the PC or the external speaker control. The volume level is up on the device and the PC. The speakers are powered.

In the Sounds & Audio Devices section of Control Panel, I have run the troubleshoot device application on all codecs, drivers, and devices listed. The result is that all are functioning properly. I have hooked different working speakers to my PC with no luck and connected the Bose speakers to another computer and they worked fine.

Device Manager does not show any yellow question marks or exclamation points for any area of my system. Anti-virus scans do not indicate problems. I have tried setting my system back to two earlier dates before the problem. I have reinstalled the drivers from the disk and verified on the manufacturer's site that they were still the latest version. I also reinstalled the Real Player software. Microsoft Fix It Center shows no problems with my system.

I have run out of things to check on my own. One minute the sound was working great while making a Skype call, then an hour later there is absolutely no sound at all from any device or internet source. I had not downloaded apps or installed new hardware prior to the problem. If you have any suggestions, I would greatly appreciate your advice. I am not looking forward to reformatting my hard drive and starting from scratch, so hopefully someone here may be able to help me. Thanks!

 

[FredWagner]

Do you have an app that will let you 'see' a sound signal, like creating an MP3 file. If the app and OS can 'see' the sound, but you can't hear it, there could be a hardware failure on your sound card where it drives the speakers or headphones. If that appears to be the case, look into vendor support or warranty service on your sound card.

Fred Wagner

 

[rclarke250]

are there headphones plugged in? have you tried headphones? does the sound card have it's own software front end? I had a gigabyte board, and sometimes when plugging and unplugging my headphones into my motherboard card, the on board realtec software which has a volume control independent of the windows volume manager will have it's "knob" turned all the way to 0, but mute is not on.

 

[gnason]

Thank you both for your suggestions. I forgot to mention that the headphones are not producing sound either. I tried them on another sound source to be sure they were working.

Microsoft Media Player seems to be getting a signal, as when a tune plays, the now playing mode has visualizations moving to the beat of the music or an equalizer like bars going up or down with the music.

Do I need to delete the old sound card driver before reinstalling a new one, or will reinstalling from the disk just copy it right over the old one? Thanks again.

 

[FredWagner]

From what you say, the signal for the sound is there, so it probably isn't drivers. My hunch is that you've got a connection on the Sound Card to the headphone/speaker jack that's become disconnected, or an audio output chip whose smoke has escaped. Power off, remove the sound card, and take a close look at it. Try a different sound card if you have one.

Fred Wagner

 

[goombawaho]

Better to put the problem sound card in a 2nd PC to see if it would work there (than to put a new sound card in the current PC). We want to test the sound card after all.

Sounds to me as though it has croaked though. All the troubleshooting steps were good ones. Sometimes it IS just a piece of bad hardware.

 

[BadBigBen]

one question, have you run DXDIAG? (START >> RUN >> type DXDIAG >> [RETURN]) ...

move the card to another PCI/PCIe slot if possible...

and setting the BIOS to DEFAULT (F5) values, sometimes clears things up... while there check to see if the ONBOARD SOUND is activated if so set it to DISABLED...

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[gnason]

Well, as it turns out, goombawaho was correct. Sometimes it IS just a piece of bad hardware. I sent a couple of hi resolution photos of the board to one of the techs at the manufacturer and he said that a circuit looked bad. I guess I just have too much faith in component manufacturers to produce products that last longer than a year. Thanks to all who were nice enough to offer your help. I do appreciate it.

 

[goombawaho]

All the troubleshooting advice/steps were GREAT in this thread. Sometimes we just keep chasing our tail and think "it can't be the hardware". Never say never.

 

[dbMark]

Even though the solution has been found, for future reference I'd like to add another thing to check similar to rclarke250's question, "does the sound card have it's own software front end?" I would like to add how I "fixed" my low volume problem.

For months I was mystified why my volume was so low I could barely hear it. Then one time I was in the installed player app for my Olympus digital voice recorders (version circa 2005) and noticed its volume was turned nearly all the way down. I slid it all the way high and problem was solved. Apparently however Olympus wrote that app, it controlled the entire computer's sound, not just the recordings played by that app! In my view, a huge programming No No!