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scriv

4 Posts

56086

January 29th, 2007 08:00

Latitude D620 No Sound

Hi there,
 
I have 10 Latitude 620s, and on most of them I'm having trouble with the sound. Upon opening the sound options in the control panel, it's displaying that there is no audio device found. For all but one laptop, reinstalling the Sigmatel driver from Dell Driver Downloads fixed the problem. But it doesn't seem to work on one machine (with identical hardware). Even after restarting, there is no volume control and in the Sounds and Audio Devices control panel displays no audio device. Any ideas anyone?
 
Thanking you in advance.
 
Sean

Jim Coates

4 Operator

 • 

13.6K Posts

January 29th, 2007 12:00

I'd run the Dell Diagnostics audio test on that one.

To run Diagnostics restart the computer, and as soon as it starts to boot up hold down f12. Select 'diagnostic' from the boot menu. It will run some tests for a couple of minutes before the Diagnostic comes up. When it does select 'custom', then the audio test. This will test your audio system independently of Windows and drivers. Alternate between using headphones and listening to speakers in case only one is working.

Jim

scriv

4 Posts

January 31st, 2007 08:00

Thanks, Jim, for your suggestion. The laptop passed the diagnostics. I later found out that some of the D620s didn't have the chipset driver installed, and this was the cause of the problem. So for anyone else having sound issues, ensure the chipset driver is installed! Thanks again.
 
Sean

Jim Coates

4 Operator

 • 

13.6K Posts

January 31st, 2007 11:00

Have these machines been re-formatted? If so there is a procedure that must be followed to get the audio back, including installing the chipset. Although Dell has published the procedure it is obscure. I don't know why it isn't prominently displayed in our FAQ because this issue comes up a couple of times a week. If you mean the machines came from the factory without chipsets or audio, that is remarkable. Jim

scriv

4 Posts

January 31st, 2007 13:00

No, we have a lot of custom applications, so we make ghost images and flash them to the hard drives. As our custom applications are changing frequently, we have to make new ghost images, and on one of these images someone forgot to install the chipset driver.

spunkmeyer88

2 Posts

February 15th, 2007 17:00

Can you post the links for the setup procedure after reformatting and the chipset driver download?

Thanks.

Jim Coates

4 Operator

 • 

13.6K Posts

February 15th, 2007 18:00

Not sure I understand what link you mean. If you also have a D620 and you are using Windows XP, your downloads page is

XP downloads for D620

After you have performed an OS reinstallation, you should first install Dell Notebook System Software (find it under System & Configuration Utilities), next and most importantly Intel Mobile Chipset (find under Chipset), then the video, Sigmatel audio, and other drivers.

Tip from rpilT2005: If still having problems installing the driver, check in the Device Manager for a "PCI Device" with a yellow question mark next to it, under the "System Devices" grouping. Hit 'update driver' on that one, and it should find a driver.

Jim

spunkmeyer88

2 Posts

February 15th, 2007 19:00

Thank you, that answered my question. I've got four D620's running XP having similar issues. A restart will fix the problem temporarily, but it recurs during the day.

Seems as though it is related to the laptop entering a suspend or lower power cycle state. The audio control panel shows no audio device. Reloaded audio drivers. Haven't tried the chipset ones except in a full format and reinstall which is the only 620 I have that isn't having the problem.

TechnoButt

6 Posts

March 20th, 2007 18:00

Did anyone resolve this?  Can you also confirm, on a related note, that workstation service, windows time service, and ics/firwall service are not started (even if set to automatic)?    This related issue seems to be a result of order of install of certain windows updates.  I'm not sure the two are related, but the timing is related.  Users have been using the laptops for 4-5 months and suddenly this month both sets of problems have cropped up (sound issues, and then the services not running properly, which causes time keeping problems and domain authentication issues).
 
I've tried installing the chipset drivers (current version, newer than the version that came on CD with the D620) and reinstalling the sound drivers.  This does not cure the problem for me.  A few days later, the sound stopped again.
 
I've got about 5 affected users (out of rougly 50 with D620 laptops all purchased Q4 2006), all running Windows XP SP2 with most updates installed. 
 
 

TechnoButt

6 Posts

March 30th, 2007 17:00

Update, see microsoft KB927891.
 
Apparently, there is a problem that causes svchost to crash, which makes all of these 'automatic' services stop running (windows audio, workstation, etc).  After installing the microsoft patch (which for some reason was not available to our WSUS server) and rebooting, the services start again without having to be manually started (ie, they don't fail to start).
 
Two users testing this solution for two days and counting.  So far, the sound/time/runas/etc issues are resolved.
 
Another guy here was troubleshooting one of the boxes when he got a watson message, and followed the link and found the article.  Ironically, M$ had the answer for anyone who happened to be sitting in front of the computer precisely when the service crashed.
 
Another concern from this fallout is that our D620's that lost windows time service could not even begin to keep time on their own.  They would lose time rapidly, as much as an hour or so per day.  I would think the internal hardware clock could do a better job of keeping time than that?  That's my next path of concern.

costeaden

20 Posts

June 8th, 2007 20:00

I have also run into this issue except for the WSUS apparently successfully pushed the 927891 patch to my desktop on May 28th, 2007.  M$ KB article is updated (edited) on May 24th, 2007.
 
The client (employee) with the D620 laptop has installed the patch as of 1039 hours this morning and her time now appears to be staying in-sync.  The system sounds have resumed working and she is happy.  Previously she was loosing 6 minutes per hour of continuous operation and my Site Support team first suspected stopping of the "Computer Browser" service as a related cause.
 
 

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