Sound Problems

[MDVla]

I have a relatively new (within the past year) gateway quad-core computer and the sound has recently stopped working. It is NOT muted, it is not the speakers, and it is not the sound card (we even ordered a new sound card and installed it. still not working.) So then, I booted a live dvd of linux to see if the sound worked with that, and it doesn't. Does anyone have an idea of what is going on? Thanks.

[Allan]

Look in Device Manager. Any yellow exclamation marks?

[MDVla]

No. Vista is detecting the sound card and says it is working properly.

[Allan]

Have you downloaded and (re)installed the LATEST driver for your sound card? Are you certain the speakers are plugged into the correct jack on the soundcard (usually green)? Have you opened the SOUND applet in Control panel and fiddled with the settings?

[MDVla]

Yes to all three.

[Allan]

Okay. You said it's not the speakers, but have you tried a different speaker anyway? Because if it isn't the soundcard and it isn't the driver and if everything is connected properly and the settings in SOUND are nominal, it's the speakers.

And did anything unusual occur before the problem arose (new hw, sw, virus, error, etc)?

[MDVla]

(I am actually in college and my parents are having this problem with my desktop at home. So I had my friend go over to figure it out (who is just as or even more capable as I am to diagnose any problems and install cards, etc.) and he tried the speakers on his laptop and they work fine.) There was nothing unusual that I know of. He did everything he/I could think of to fix it.

[Allan]

Well, it ain't rocket science . Either:

1) Sound card is bad or
2) Speakers are bad or
3) Connection is bad or
4) Driver is bad or
5) Settings in SOUND applet are incorrect or
6) Something happened with the system that caused the sound to stop working (virus, hw conflict or failure, etc).