Anyone any idea why I cant hear anything on my computer's speakers?

[bitofadramaqueen]

They appear to have suddenly stopped working. They have power, are connected to each other and the computer, and I've done the troubleshooting process.

There's definitely a very faint sound coming from the computer itself, but nothing coming from the actual speakers.

Any suggestions welcome!

Is the mute box ticked?

Try plugging in a set of headphones ie MP3 ones and see if they work.

No I dont think so - the troubleshooter took me through all of that. Will dig out some earphones later though to see if they work.

Would they just plug into same socket I use for speakers

Ok, now I feel very thick. DH had left his headphones plugged into the computer (which I hadn't noticed among the pile of camera cables, ipod cables, headphones etc) and the faint sound I could hear was of course coming from those headphones. As soon as I unplugged them the speakers worked.

Am going to blame baby brain... Thanks for the reply anyway MatNanPlusAbroad.

ROFL - I've done that

ahh - but if you have enough holes in the back of your computer you can have your speakers producing sound and you headphones plugged in at the same time

Excellent I've been getting cross with speakers at school only to realise (in front of 25 teenagers) I'd forgotten to turn them on/push the socket in properly.

Indeed faq - both speakers and headphones can be plugged in at same time. I never ever plug headphones into the computer so of course it never even occurred to me

Needless to say DH got the blame

lol - I've got headphones with my microphone attached for Skype, but I keep them plugged in and just turn the headphone volume right down and my normal speakers up if I'm not using skype

Of course, what I haven't mentioned is the hour I spent 'troubleshooting' or the time spent on my hands and knees pulling out the computer and checking all the cables. Or deciding after plugging my own earphones into the plug for the speakers that it was clearly some kind of software fault.

This is going to be filed along with the memory of not being able to use my keyboard (I'd turned the sticky keys on) on my very first day in a new job. And doing it AGAIN the next day. To be fair, IT dept didn't know what I'd done.

mind you I can't talk really, while I have it set up to cleverly be able to use the speakers, the headphones - or both, without having to unplug any wires I did t discover last week that the reason my speakers hadn't been working was.....

Because the wire that goes into the Bass controller bit (I have very fancy speakers ) had come out when I'd been moving them around ages ago. I thought I had the wires in the wrong holes in the back of the computer

that reminds me of when I rang up to shout at Sky because after a useless engineer came out and didn't fix one problem, I didn't have any sound on my sky channels. The scart cable was, ahem, loose .

That's becausee scart cables are crap, dramaqueen. The one on the TV in the playroom has been held in a horizontal position for the past 5 years by a rainbow coloured rubber from Paignton Zoo, because otherwise we lose the sound.

I dont know what the bloody sky engineer did to ours. We've never had any problems and now we constantly lose sound or picture. Grrrr. But dont get me started on Sky!

Loving that a rainbow rubber is keeping it all together in your playroom!

Because the scart cables are so stiff and heavy they do tend to pull out. Some might be better off with a flat scart cable like this
You should get the shortest that will reach since that works better.

We have ribbon cable like that on our main TV - we really need to get one for the playroom too - they are much better. As onager says, it's the weight of the cable that makes it pull out - together with the fact that the cable comes out sideways instead if straight back - and half the time it's the wrong way, depending on where your other equipment is positioned.

Thanks onager. Might look out for those in the future. Our scart cable isn't loose though, it's in fairly tightly. Every now and again the picture disappears and it needs a wiggle - it was fine for years before the evil Sky man came. I'll check the positioning though to see if it's twisted somewhere.

It gives me an opportunity to curse the Sky engineer though, which I always enjoy .