Sound driver or sound card

[Dave Davison]

We have just had a rather old "Time" computer given for a Table Top sale at church but - whilst it only has Notepad rather than Word installed all the other functions seem ok except that there is no sound sound. I have checked the various settings in the control panel which seem to be ok so maybe there is a problem with either the sound card or driver. How do I ascertain which of these two are the cause of the problem? The techie at the local computer shop reckons that if the problem is the sound card a new one will be around £15 so I'm half hoping it is the driver that needs attention as selling the unit may only realize £20 - £30 which means replacing the sound card does not make good sense. Cheers Dave.

[viking33]

We have just had a rather old "Time" computer given for a Table Top sale at church but - whilst it only has Notepad rather than Word installed all the other functions seem ok except that there is no sound sound. I have checked the various settings in the control panel which seem to be ok so maybe there is a problem with either the sound card or driver. How do I ascertain which of these two are the cause of the problem? The techie at the local computer shop reckons that if the problem is the sound card a new one will be around £15 so I'm half hoping it is the driver that needs attention as selling the unit may only realize £20 - £30 which means replacing the sound card does not make good sense. Cheers Dave.

Notepad was part of the OS, while Word was not.
IS this a desktop or laptop computer?
Does it have an audio "OUT" jack somewhere? If so, you could plug in a headphone to check for sound.
Don't forget, besides sound card and drivers, you need a way to produce the sounds, like an internal speaker.

[Dave Davison]

Quick reply, its a desktop computer; and yes it has a green socket on the rear for speaker out and one on the front with an earphones sign on it. I tried to play an audio cd and listen to it by plugging the earphones into both sockets but no sound. Thanks for the reply, its a little late now so will double check in the morning and report my findings. Thanx Dave.

[stuck]

I tried to play an audio cd

What happened when you inserted the CD? Did Windows Media Player open and look as if it was playing the audio tracks on the CD?

What operating system is on this old PC? XP / WinMe / Win98SE (as in Second Edition) / Win98 (aka 98 'gold' or 98 First Edition)

Ken

[Dave Davison]

Thanks gents for the responses, I just booted up the old box -has XP installed- inserted a cd and when I clicked "play", a scrolling pattern of shapes appeared on screen but no sound so I decided to check the sound settings again in the "Control" panel & -to my great surprise- the "Mute" option in the "Wave" section was ticked. Deleting that tick resolved the issue instantly. I can't imagine it happening randomly so why the previous owner had muted only that option will remain a mystery. However! problem solved without cost so whatever it raises will go towards filling shoe boxes with daily essentials and delivered to needy children in Rumania by "Blytheswood" a charity located in Scotland. Many thanks again Dave.

[stuck]

Glad it's resolved at no cost.

As to why the sound was muted, all our PCs in the office are muted. There's nothing worse than other people's PCs going beep all the time!

Meanwhile at home, I don't have the sound muted but I routinely do not have the speakers powered up. I don't play games and if I want to listen to a CD I'll enjoy it via my Hifi in the comfort of my sofa and I rarely do video/audio from the internet. Also, consider that in the old days of the internet (you did say this was an old PC) audio and video over a dial-up connection was a non starter. So if you didn't play games, you had a HiFi system and only had dial-up the need for sound on a PC would be limited.

Ken

[Dave Davison]

thanks again...........I forgot to mention that -for me- I found it strange that when I rectified the issue that sound came out of the computer (base unit) so it must have a speaker built in amongst the hardware; something I have never come across before. ??????? Cheers Dave.

[stuck]

All PCs have a built in speaker. It's good for beeps and the like but you wouldn't want to listen to a CD through it, it would make a cheap radio sound like HiFi. That's why sound cards were invented, so the PC can feed audio to 'proper' speakers/headphones.

The quality of the signal that sound cards generate has improved considerably over the years. I can plug the headphone socket on my Acer netbook into the line in socket in my car's sound system and enjoy my music collection in pretty high quality sound without having to fill the car with a stack of CDs. Still not close to my HiFi in the living room though

Ken