Inspiron 1501 speakers/sound

Try using System Restore to get the Registry back to a time before the problem first occurred. In XP, go to

Start>All Programs>Accessories>System Tools>System Restore

and tick 'Restore my computer to an earlier time'. 

In Vista, type 'restore' into the Start menu search box, and System Restore will appear in the start menu.

 

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Try reinstalling the audio driver. Go to Control Panel/System/Hardware/Device Manager. Find the audio driver under Sound Controllers, right click on it, and then click Uninstall. Restart the computer. Windows should automatically detect your device and display a wizard that helps you reinstall the driver for it.

A better way is to first delete the driver files from your computer to ensure a clean new driver installation. Go to the "Add/Remove Programs" in the Control Panel and remove the current Sigmatel if it is there in the list of programs and restart the computer. (Vista users go to Computer> Uninstall or Change a Program.)

If 'Sigmatel' is not listed there, go to your hard drive, c:\Dell\Drivers\R...(Sigmatel driver file name) and delete the folder.  Next download and install a new audio driver from your driver downloads page. Click on the + sign next to 'Audio Drivers' and download the one named Sigmatel.

 

 

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I'll paste in some information below that is another explanation for those symptoms, but it is not necessarily the cause of your problems on your particular computer.

The Dell laptops like yours with a Sigmatel 92xx audio chip utilize IDT's Universal Jacks technology, which is somewhat complicated. In addition to the usual mechanical parts, the jack also uses current & impedance-sensing techniques to trigger software configuration and switching (to send the audio signal to the speakers). So there are three areas of potential failure: mechanical, electronic, and software. Sometimes, a little very gentle wiggle of a plug in the jack will get it to resume normal functioning, at least temporarily. There is a sensing pin in the jack (Sense_A pin) that is used to detect the presence of plugs and I think that it can be the cause of failure to trigger the software switching.

Normally the audio test in Dell Diagnostics would confirm that there is a hardware problem, but the Universal Jacks can cause a false positive result in Diagnostics. That is because Diagnostics operates in DOS, outside of Windows, so a Windows software misconfiguration is irrelevant to the test even though in this case it is caused by hardware.  So the audio test can pass in Diagnostics, correctly signaling that software configuration is the immediate cause of the problem, but missing that a hardware problem, the bad jack or sensing pin, is the root cause. In these instances the only reliable diagnostic procedure might be to try a new motherboard. In other words, it can be tough to diagnose. But if the wiggling trick produced any sound at all, that would suggest this is the problem.

 

 

Jim