DELL INSPIRON 15 speakers are not working even after updating all the audio drivers

speakers are not working

Hello. Plug in headphones into the headphone jack and listen. If you do not hear audio through the headphones either then it is probably not a problem with the speakers.

If you do hear audio through the headphones when plugged in, but no audio through speakers when the headphones are unplugged, then there might be a failure of the speakers. Test the speakers for failure by running either the audio test in the ePSA test, or by failing the color bar test in  the PSA test {Your laptop will have either the ePSA test or the older PSA test.) Instructions for testing the speakers.

If the speakers pass the speaker test but produce no audio when you are in Windows (but you do get audio through the headphone jack), then the audio driver might be at fault.To test the driver, switch between the Realtek audio driver and the Windows native audio driver.

1. Open the Device Manager (find it in the Control Panel, or type devmgmt.msc into the search box).
2. Expand the "Sound, video & game controllers" and right click on "Realtek High Definition Audio".
3. Select to "Update Driver Software".
4. Click on "Browse my computer for driver software".
5. Click "Let me pick from a list of drivers on my computer".
6. Put a check in the box "Show compatible hardware" if not already checked.
7. In the list of devices, click "High Definition Audio" (the native driver).
8. Click "Next".
9. On the Update Driver Warning box, click "Yes" (install the driver).
10. Restart the laptop if prompted. If not prompted, sometimes you have to restart, sometimes not.

[To get back to the Realtek driver, do it again but reverse the names in steps 2 and 7.]

If you only have the symptoms with one of the drivers, then the other is at fault.

If you have the same symptoms with both audio drivers, then it could be a failure of the headphone jack. Headphone jacks can have a type of failure that we call the sense pin issue. This is where the jack falsely detects a plug in the jack and so cuts off the audio signal from going to the speakers. Details of the sense pin issue are in the first section of the Headphone Jack FAQ.

If you need more help, please reply back with the full model name of the laptop, and tell us which operating system is on the laptop. Also include details of the circumstances -- whatever was going on when the issue first occurred.