No audio Latitude D830

Max, 

I'll paste in some information below that is one explanation for those symptoms, but I must emphasize that it is not necessarily the cause of your problems on your particular computer. It could be a software problem and perhaps it will help if you delete the Sigmatel listing in Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel, restart, then download and install a new Sigmatel driver.

There is another explanation for this combination of symptoms

    * Speakers don't work
    * Headphone jack does work
    * Reinstalling audio driver does not help
    * Audio test in Dell Diagnostics passes


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.

I would contact Dell about a repair if you are still under warranty.

Hello,

i also got this "Sense_A Pin" Problem .

As far as i understand the Problem, it is a software problem. Why its there no driver-option to just bypass the "Jack sense" and select manually if the internal speakers  or Headphone-out should be taken ??

For sure I`ll never gonna buy a new motherboard just to watch  youtube-videos one in a while.

So Please DELL make a "Software" Bugfix for this issue.

Greets,

Norbert

Sorry, i have to add this:

 I understand that this is a problem with the Jack. But to fix it, it should be possible to use software. (Otherwise the onboard-speaker couldn`t work with the Diagnostic-Software)

As far as i understand the Problem, it is a software problem.

Well, it is a software and a hardware problem. But you are right that there should be an option in the driver to bypass the sense pin. Unfortunately  there isn't and there will not be. There is no Sigmatel company anymore to re-write the driver and Dell would not pay them for a new driver for an old model anyway.

If you want you can try to use a Toshiba driver. Somebody an Inspiron E1705 with XP said they were able to install an audio driver from Toshiba (driver qg600audiox from the Toshiba Qosmio G35-AV600) that bypasses the pins. You lose the functionality of both mic and output jacks, but the speakers work again. That might work for your model because it has similar audio to the E1705.

Link to Toshiba driver:
http://www.driversdown.com/Download.asp?ID=102232&Url=http://down3.driversdown.com/Notebook/qg600audiox.exe