XPS 8500 front panel speaker/headphone jack acting up

My green front panel audio jack is malfunctioning. When nothing is plugged in, Dell Audio thinks it's enabled. When something is plugged in, the port is disabled or enabled intermittently.

In either case, the back panel audio jack is disabled (or emitting white noise). There is no audio output.

In the meantime, I'm using HDMI audio through my video card and monitor. However, I would like to know how to fix this. It's likely a hardware/mechanical issue, not software. I already reinstalled my Realtek drivers, which didn't fix the issue.

Please help. Thanks!