[swingkid02]

Okay... here it goes...

What I can do,
I can play audio cd's
I can play mp3's in winamp
I can play video's in windows media player (with sound)

What is wrong
Cannot get sound from a webpage (unless it uses a plug-in)
Cannot get any system sounds
Cannot get audio icon in toolbar to reappear (I did enable it in control panel)
Cannot use integrated audio dongle on my laptop

I tried to update all audio drivers and made sure that nothing was muted through windows. This did not work.

Any ideas?
Thanks,
Rob

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Let's see if it could be a corrupted file since you say that you can't even get the sound icon to appear in the system tray.

Go to Start->Run and type in sfc /scannow and hit OK. Let it scan. If it finds any files missing/corrupted, it may ask for the Windows CD.

What browser are you using? Does the sound problem happen on other browsers as well? If not, it might be a setting someone changed that caused this problem.

[greyknight17]

Let's see if it could be a corrupted file since you say that you can't even get the sound icon to appear in the system tray.

Go to Start->Run and type in sfc /scannow and hit OK. Let it scan. If it finds any files missing/corrupted, it may ask for the Windows CD.

What browser are you using? Does the sound problem happen on other browsers as well? If not, it might be a setting someone changed that caused this problem.

[swingkid02]

I ran the scan and left the room... when I came back there was no sign that it had ran at all. So I ran it again and the same thing happened. I assume that means there are no problems with the files it searched.

I use Firefox almost exclusively, though I have checked for sounds on IE and the AOL browser that comes with AIM to no avail.

Thanks for the help so far!

Rob

[greyknight17]

So it's happening to all browsers?

OK, go to Start->Control Panel->Sound and Audio Devices. Go to the Audio tab and make sure that under Sound Playback it has your device listed.

See if this is of any use:

Download CleanUp! http://cleanup.stevengould.org/ (Alternate Link if main link don't work - http://www.greyknigh...spy/CleanUp.exe ) and install it. CleanUp! deletes EVERYTHING out of your temp/temporary folders, it does not make backups. If you have any documents or programs that are saved in any Temporary Folders, please make a backup of these before running CleanUp!. Run CleanUp! and click on the Options button. Uncheck 'Scan local drives for temporary files'. Also uncheck those two Newsgroup entries if you don't want to delete them. Click OK and then click on the CleanUp! button. Let it run. After it's done, choose Yes to logoff.

Check your browser and go to a site with sounds...working?

[swingkid02]

Still nothing... I already had Cleanup! however I did run it again with the options you mentioned. Still nothing... I'm not getting any sounds unless it's from an independant program. Windows Media Player and RealPlayer and WinAmp and others like it work fine. But any systems sounds... still nothing. I've never even heard of anything like this.

Rob

[greyknight17]

This is a long shot (since sounds do work from other programs), but try uninstalling your audio/sound drivers. Then restart and reinstall them...

[swingkid02]

Not such a long shot that I haven't tried it already... LOL... I tried it twice before I ever posted anything about the problem.

See the thing is... I'm fairly knowledgable about computers... and nothing I've tried seems to work... and the concept of only system sounds not working is really messing with my head. If it were the sound card I'd figure it would happen with everything.

Is there any way to check to see if the sound drivers are loading at startup??? I figured they have to be if the sound device shows up under the hardware manager, but I'm not sure if that's a true assumption.

Thanks,

Rob

[greyknight17]

There is a way to see the drivers load up, but it won't look pretty...When you boot up to Safe Mode with Command Prompt (I think) it will show the drivers loading...flashing by really quickly. I don't know if Windows have a log of that somewhere or not. Try to do a search for bootlog.txt and see if you can find it. That may have it.

But yes, usually the Device Manager is accurate especially if you uninstalled the driver and reinstalled it back.

Do you have another sound card you can use? Is this one a built in audio device or is it a sound card? If it's a sound card, do you have a built in one that you can use to test out? We can help eliminate the problem that way...

Go to Start->Control Panel->Sound and Audio Devices. Look through the tabs and look at the sound card names. Is that the proper one you have on the computer now?

[swingkid02]

Well I'm dealing with a built in audio card here... it's actually soundmax digital audio, an audio package from gateway. Everything under device manager looks like I'd expect it to.

Rob

[greyknight17]

Do you have a PCI soundcard you can use/borrow to test out with?

Not sure what it could be since you can play sounds...which leads me to think that it can't be the card itself. Let's see if anyone has other suggestions.

[swingkid02]

Hey man... I'm really sorry about this but the proverbial 'sh@t' just hit the fan.

I think this sound thing was just a symptom of hard drive failure.

My laptop started to take about half an hour to do even the most simple of tasks and then goes back to running perfectly a couple of minutes later. I am intermittently able to start up my computer and have been able to back up most of the essentials. However I ran a diagnostic utility from Gateway and the SMART test is failing... which I'm pretty sure means things will only get worse from here. I do still have a warranty for this computer so hopefully I can get a new hard drive and then any problems I currently am having... well they should disappear.

Thanks again for all the help...

Rob

[greyknight17]

No problem Rob. Get that fixed up since it's under warranty like you said...