Headphone Jack Loose

It's likely that the contact blades within the jack are mis-aligned and the jack is probably soldered to the motherboard. Much depends on your comfort level with dis-assembley and inspection, and whether you can either access and re-align the blades or locate and install a replacement for the jack. It may be possible, but ...

There is some skill and experience, plus maybe one or two little tricks required to removing a multi-pin device soldered to a multi-layered fine-pitch PC board without destroying or lifting the lands. I'm sure Dell has some success in re-furbishing motherboards suffering this type of failure, but it's not really a field repair.

A six inch long 1/8" Y adapter has saved the headphone jack on my laptop more than once. With the adapter, my headphones come unpluged at about twelve ounces of tension from any angle without damage to the jack or the headphone cable and plug. In the spirit of basic research, this discovery was "accidental". Following a particularly exilerating incident involving the headphone cable, a cat, and a dog, I realized how lucky I was that the headphone cable comes unplugged so easily.

GM

While I'm sure its not the solution you are looking for, if it comes down to you having to pay for a new motherboard, a PCMCIA or USB sound card will be a much cheaper alternative.

JK

I figured out where the problem is coming from.  The blades on the headphone jack are bent open which explains why the internal speakers don't play under any condition.  What is the best way to get at the headphone jack so I can fix the blades?

Thanks