Remeber not too long ago I had a strange event happen: I had the sound coming out of my Laptop's speakers and out of my headset simultaneously.
THE PREVIOUSLY "RESOLVED" PROBLEM REPEATS ITSELF...
That was kind of weird but I resolved this strange sound problem then. It repeated yesterday. Hmm.
...AND GETS WORSE
Then today, while I was watching a video about making money with your blog the vista sound went away, totally. No sound on Vista! That was very annoying!
My laptop with "Windows Vista, No Sound" version is not much fun. I'm not very good at reading lips! Anyhow I played around a bit and I found a couple of weird things going on.
- The headphones and the speakers playing simultaneously. Basically, the speakers wouldn't shut off when the headphone jack is inserted. This could be a jack problem, but it didn't look like one!
- (later) No Sound from Vista. Pressing Fn Up Arrow showed the Volume Bar, and it was at its max, but no sound. The Video Player (Flash Video Player) sound button was at 100%.
A FUNNY THING HAPPENED
Except this: Pressed on Speaker, Properties, again Properties under "Controller Information, High Definition Audio Device", clicked the Driver Tab on Top and pressed Disable to turn off sound! As soon as I confirmed the delete, the sound came on! I rejected the next popup suggesting to reboot to complete the changes. I liked having sound! This lasted for about 30 seconds and then the sound shut itself off again. Funny enough, I was able to repeat this procedure 3-4 times which repeatedly gave me sound for 30 or so seconds at the time. So let's add another "weird symptom" bullet:
- the sound came on after hitting the "Disable" in the sound driver and confirming!
The strange behavior really ruled out any obvious hardware problem such as speakers or headphones or headphone jack switch. So next thing to think about: maybe the Realtek driver went bad. OK.
DOWNLOADING FRESH DRIVERS AND REMOVING THE INSTALLED DRIVERS
I proceeded to download the driver from the Acer (manufacturer) website acer.com. Selected my country, laptop model and Voila, there it was. It was a Realtek High Definition Audio Driver which seems quite common on Vista these days. About 37 Mbytes zipped. I placed it on my hard drive and proceeded to uninstall the existing driver as directed. Start, Control Panel, Hardware and Sound, Sound, Playback Tab, Speakers, General Tab, Properties, Under Controller information, High Definition Audio Device, Properties, Driver Tab, Uninstall Button (advanced). Agreed (checked) Delete the Driver Software. Click OK.
UNINSTALL SUCCESSFUL. HERE NOT FOLLOWING DIRECTIONS PROVES BENEFICIAL
The driver uninstalled successfully and Vista offered a reboot. I agreed contrary to the directions from the above filecluster website. This proved successful. It turned out, it removed the need to actually install the downloaded driver as Vista found (the old?) drivers and installed them during the restart process. Mind you, I feel the "old" Vista drivers were up-to-date.
VISTA NO SOUND PROBLEM SOLVED
The sound came back. Vista, No Sound Problem Solved. For now. I'll keep you posted.
MY PROBLEM SOLVED. WHAT ABOUT YOURS? LEAVE A COMMENT PLEASE?
Let me know if these directions helped with your sound or even if they didn't help you. Either way, leave me a comment, would you!
IF YOUR PROBLEM IS SOLVED, BOOKMARK THIS PAGE FOR LATER!
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