No sound on netbook

[itzbilly]

Hey guys, I have in my hands a Dell Inspiron 910 netbook.

I did a fresh install of Windows XP SP3 and everything is working fine, except for one problem: there's no sound.

My Windows copy had drivers for Realtek Audio but the netbook is unable to play any sound. There are no error messages that come up when trying to open up Sounds manager, like on a Desktop PC but it is still not playing any sounds.

It has external speakers and a headphone jack but neither one will play any sounds at all.

Any ideas?

[cauzomb]

open the control panel/system/hardware/device manager, scroll down to "Sound, video and game controllers" click the plus sign, then make sure that the audio device drivers are installed for your hadware, and/or that there are no warnings/exclamation marks next to the audio devices. If there are any marks next to the audio controller on your system, try another driver. If none, go back to the control panel window, open sound and audio devices, then look in the audio tab, make sure that the default device for sound playback is the same device listed in the device manager... I have not tried this driver, and have not downloaded from this source, so use at your own risk, but this driver version has been reported to work with the dell 910 http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/

[itzbilly]

There are no warnings for the Audio devices, but there are warnings under "Other devices":
- Base System Device
- Base System Device
- Unknown Device
- Video Controller (VGA Compatible)

I tried going to that link that you sent but when I clicked on High Definition Audio Codecs (Software) and AC'97 Audio Codecs (Software), it brings me to http://152.104.125.41/ (their homepage, I'm guessing, if it doesn't load for you)

Is this normal? And if so, where can I find the driver I need? Thanks.

[cauzomb]

when I click on the link that I posted I get a page with several other links, when I click on the HDaudio link I get a page with a warning that their drivers may not have customizations for specific manufactures features, there is an accept these terms check box and next button. Same with the AC97 link. If the ATI graphics card is an ad-on and has the drivers loaded for it, and there is a built in graphcis card, intel chipset based, the video controller exception may be for the onboard intel graphics, the onboard graphics should be disabled in the bios setup, then the "video controller (vga compatible) device can be uninstalled from the device manager. Not sure what drivers you need for the base system device. Looks like you need some drivers from dell. Other than getting the dell drivers, have you checked the volume control properties, double click the speaker tray icon and look for any "muted" playback sliders? Try entering the service tag into the service tag link that reads "Add or Edit Service Tag"
via support.dell.com also look at their driver install order to see what drivers should be installed first. http://support.dell.com/support/down...&catid=&impid=

[itzbilly]

Yes, that's what I mean. I see the paragraph followed by the Accept button. But once I click accept, it brings me to that url on my last post.

[cauzomb]

That's odd, I tried checking the box and clicking the next button, but their page wouldn't allow me to select the "next" button, it remained grayed out, I waited about 2 minutes to see if anything changed, but nope.. looks like they might be having issues.

[itzbilly]

Well, it's fine. Problem solved after downloading Dell's driver for it. Thanks for the help cauzomb!

[cauzomb]

Glad to help, sorry I didn't mention the dell support/drivers in the first place.