h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yeah tried the one at the front - no joy.

I got a Big box of cables, but they're mainly big power cables, not little fiddly ones!

I've a dedicated power cable box, another of audio cables, another of computer cables and another of assorted 'toher cables' plus all the cables hanging off of hooks in the studeo for when they need to ve used

Can't really think of any other things to suggest for the audio; I'd certianly want to try it with a differnt cable to see if its that as they are pretty easily busted and it'd be a simple solution to the problem rahter than keeping palying with settings on the PC which may or may not be alright as they are anyhow

Nah you're right. I feel bad that you're there giving me your time and I've got no tools to try to fix it with!

I shall just have to have patience....

Thanks for all your help 2legs (and Icy and Alex)

AC'97 is the integrated sound chip on your motherboard - it should be the 6 colour-coded sockets at the back.

The following might not apply to XP, I can't remember. If you go into Control Panel -> Sound, whilst playing some music, you should be able to see which sound device is currently playing because there will be a little green volume meter flickering.

Also, your media player might be ignoring your default sound device, so check in its own options in addition to the system sound config.

Sorry if I've repeated anyone, and good luck with your problem. Sound is actually one of the things Vista does better - on most versions of Windows (hell, on most operating systems of any make) it is murder, as you are currently experiencing.

Hi Bouncy, got no meter flickering on the XP version.

Not using any particular media player at the mo', just running stuff off YouTube, and playing with the volume button in my system tray as my testing devices.


I've got Vista on the laptop, but of course there's built in sound for that so it's all groovy.

Have you tried rebooting (or booting, for that matter )?

I'm an XP (& a frequent YouTube) user too, so I was horrified when I lost all sound from my system last week.

After fiddling for a while - during which I managed to lose the volume icon - I decided to reboot...... and it's been happy listening ever since.

Good luck!

If you do loose the volume icon in the system tray, you can or should, be able to reengage it by going to control panel/sounds and audio devices; Ther eis a check box there to have or not to have the volume control appear in the system tray....

There used to be a great little application, called 'quick mix' I think; But this must have been back under Windows 98; Basically it 'saved' your audio settings (E.G., volume and pan and mute/unmute), and you could stick it to run at startup, so it'd always put your audio settings back to the way you want them, irrelivent of any changes any ohter audio applications may have made the last time you opened them... Actually I relaly oughta gosee if ther eis a version of quick mix for XP: As I've got three soundcards that I use on my PC it can all get a bit complicated when some random setting decides to change itself (three soundcards and five differnt sets of audio drivers for them, just to make it even more rediculusly complicated; and one of the soundcards basically can't be controlled by the windows control panel audio setting at all)

It's fixed!


Turns out the soundcard needed a couple of jumpers. I offered my quality cashmere to sacrifice, but apparently that's the wrong type of jumper.

Sound is now forthcoming, hurrah!

Thanks very much for all the ideas.

Ahh, I guess then when you had the err motherboard was it, changed on the PC, the soundcard just wasn't attached back up right Sorry I couldn't help more, I'm useually fairly good at trouble shooting soundcard probs as I seem to have to do it fairly regularly on my own system