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Sound Devices Have Disappeared

B

boweasel

n00b
Joined
Mar 3, 2014
Messages
4
Have a Gateway M-Series laptop that came with 32 bit Vista Home Premium installed. We upgraded to Windows 7 Home Premium (also 32 bit) several years ago and have had no problems until recently.

We have no sound. Windows Audio is enabled and started. The speaker icon in the system tray has a red X to the right of it. Clicking on it opens a diagnostic page, that within 20 seconds says it couldn't identify the problem. When I go to Control Panel - Sound the Playback tab only displays an AMD High Definition Audio Device which it says is not plugged in. We DID have 2 other devices listed there previously, one of then being the default device labeled Speakers and Headphones. Device manager currently displays only the AMD HDMI sound device.

Sometimes on a reboot everything seems to fall back into place - the speaker icon no longer had the X, and another device displayed under Sound in Device Mgr ('High Definition Audio Device'), and the Speakers and Headphones were back under the Playback tab (although they were both labeled 'Not Pluggrd In', and each had a little red downward arrow inside a circle) ... but I still had no sound.
What does 'Not Plugged In' mean in reference to a laptop that has no external speakers?
 
doesn't a red x next to the speaker icon in the system tray just mean that sounds are muted?
 
No. When the volume is muted, there's a little circle with a diagonal line through it next to the speaker.
 
Ah, my bad. The not plugged in could be referring to the headphone jack perhaps?
 
On the Playback tab, BOTH the Speakers and the Headphones are listed separately. Both of them have the little red down arrow inside a circle, and both say Not Plugged In.
 
i think you should go to the device manager and remove the sound card / devices and then reboot and let windows find them again and see if that changes anything?

did you change anything prior to the problem starting (update video or sound drivers install new software?)

it is also possible that the onboard sound chip or whatnot has just gone also (which would be a bummer but it can and does happen sometimes.)

but if it was my computer i'd check for / download newest audio drivers then remove/ uninstall the audio and let it re-detect / install new drivers and see if that helps.
 
One of the fuzzy areas is that Gateway does not have an audio driver listed for an M-1629 running Windows 7. They only give you one for Vista (which is the original OS). When I download that one (SigmaTel 6.10.5609.) I get an error, Device Object not present, restart the system and run setup again.

I wish this forum allowed me to upload images. It might make it clearer.
 
oh lucky you... i googled and it sounds like SigmaTel got bought and blah blah new owners don't supply drivers to end users... i hate this sort of crap...


so... might look here

http://forums.laptopvideo2go.com/topic/23790-latest-sigmatel-idt-modded-drivers-for-win-7-and-vista/


not really my first choice on how to get drivers but sometimes you have to get creative?

alternately have you tried using windows update to see if it can find drivers for the audio?


one nice thing I can say about Realtek is they always have had drivers readily available for download.
 
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