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General discussion

no sound from dell laptop

Feb 1, 2005 1:52AM PST

I have a dell inspiron 4150, and I use windows XP. I also have a moronic brother who was using my laptop when I was out of town (against my wishes). Of course, when I was away he broke it and he doesn't know how.
My problem is this: no sound comes from the laptop speakers, and when you plug in headphones there's no sound there either. Is it possible to blow laptop speakers by playing something too loudly? But wouldn't the headphone jack still work? When video is playing, if you listen carefully, you can barely hear a very subtle hissing/humming sound. When you try to adjust the volume tab up and down it makes a sound like a zipper, and gets louder and softer. But that's it. I used the little troubleshooter thing but it didn't help much. I also tried to update the drivers, but frankly, I have no idea what I'm doing and I really don't want to mess it up anymore than it already is.

Discussion is locked

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A visit over to Device Manager...
Feb 1, 2005 1:57AM PST

is called for and look into Sound, Video and Game Controllers may reveal a problem device.

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checked that out
Feb 1, 2005 1:59AM PST

Yeah, I tried that to see if something was up. Normally, when there's a problem with a device there's a little exclamation mark, right? Everything checks out.

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The next stop is over to...
Feb 1, 2005 8:13AM PST

Sound and Audio Devices within Control Panel. See if your sound device is listed on the Audio tab.

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Analog vs Digital
Feb 3, 2005 12:33AM PST

Ask your brother if he maybe tried plugging this into an analog external say stereo? (Through the headphone jack) or set of speakers? This sounds like a component shorted in the audio circuit to me....Laptops use/carry a digital audio circuit and if its combined with an analog somthing is going to give.. Generally the digital...