Firstly you cant believe everything you hear on forums about known issues. There are literally millions of dells sold everyday and just because one or even 10 people get together on a forum to moan about a similar issue doesnt make it a known issue. Now if the sound wasnt working on headphones or internal speakers- if all the sound drivers have been checked and if the outside windows diags failed to produce sound, the part you will be looking at replacing is the motherboard. I have a number of dells and I have found them to be excellent machines. I had a technical issue with 2 of them and I found the help I recieved by their techs to be second to none.
I have just recently corrected a problem with the standby on my 5160 which I bought in Sept. 2004. Now the sound has gone. It just disappeared all of a sudden. I was listening to a CD with my headphones, I took the out to talk to someone and when I put them back the sound was gone.
I went through the troubleshooting and nothing has worked. I cannot get any sound now, CD or otherwise. I don't want to phone the help line because it takes forever to get through and they didn't solve the last problem I had anyway.
Also why has someone just posted a message saying how great Dell are? I thought this page was for people who have a problem?
I have an Inspiron 8600 and a friend has an 8500. Both of us have experienced this problem. It has occurred to both of us when we inserted the plug from our headphones into the speaker-out jack on the computer. In the headphones you hear a "static zap" and zappo, the sound is dead. I tried it once with the sound playing though the laptop's speakers, inserted the headphones, the sound became low & distorted in the headphones (had to crank all volume levels and could only hear soft/distorted sound), pulled out the headphone plug, and the sound was still low & distorted.
I fixed the problem by updating the BIOS (the first time it happened, I updated the BIOS to the latest version, then the next time it happened, I just re-ran the same version update... I think there is an ESD problem with a static zap to the speaker-out jack somehow zapping the system's BIOS NVRAM. Since others have fixed the problem by running the Dell diagnostics program this seems to confirm this. I wouldn't doubt this program examines errors in the BIOS and resets it.
In a word, Don't remove the headphone jack while audio is playing. The audio driver shuts the card down. I also had this fright with my 5150. Alas the solution is simple, reboot, and at least for me the sound comes back.
Ambers
28 Posts
0
January 15th, 2005 10:00
nickcua
4 Posts
0
January 20th, 2005 01:00
5160_User
7 Posts
0
January 24th, 2005 18:00
I have just recently corrected a problem with the standby on my 5160 which I bought in Sept. 2004. Now the sound has gone. It just disappeared all of a sudden. I was listening to a CD with my headphones, I took the out to talk to someone and when I put them back the sound was gone.
I went through the troubleshooting and nothing has worked. I cannot get any sound now, CD or otherwise. I don't want to phone the help line because it takes forever to get through and they didn't solve the last problem I had anyway.
Also why has someone just posted a message saying how great Dell are? I thought this page was for people who have a problem?
PaulVP
23 Posts
0
March 8th, 2005 02:00
I think I've got a solution...
I have an Inspiron 8600 and a friend has an 8500. Both of us have experienced this problem. It has occurred to both of us when we inserted the plug from our headphones into the speaker-out jack on the computer. In the headphones you hear a "static zap" and zappo, the sound is dead. I tried it once with the sound playing though the laptop's speakers, inserted the headphones, the sound became low & distorted in the headphones (had to crank all volume levels and could only hear soft/distorted sound), pulled out the headphone plug, and the sound was still low & distorted.
I fixed the problem by updating the BIOS (the first time it happened, I updated the BIOS to the latest version, then the next time it happened, I just re-ran the same version update... I think there is an ESD problem with a static zap to the speaker-out jack somehow zapping the system's BIOS NVRAM. Since others have fixed the problem by running the Dell diagnostics program this seems to confirm this. I wouldn't doubt this program examines errors in the BIOS and resets it.
Any other thoughts out there?
Paul
Halo-djk
1 Rookie
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11 Posts
0
June 12th, 2005 10:00