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andyyv

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24515

April 16th, 2006 14:00

Internal Speakers do not work

Hello!
I have a dell inspiron 6400 notebook. Some days ago the internal speakers stop working.
The sound on the external speakers is OK. Reinstalling the drivers did not solve the problem. When running the audio test of the diagnostic disk, the sound is played on both internal and external speakers. I suspect that the audio driver does not detect when the external speakers are inserted / removed... Any suggestions?

rosscal

1 Message

April 23rd, 2006 22:00

I too have a 6400 and the same has happened to me as well. I find that if I install the audio drivers, I can get sound from the speakers within Windows, but as soon as I reboot the sound no longer works. I have sent a request to Dell support but they suggest that I run the diagnostics, which I have done many times and does not make any difference or throw any error. I am in the process of restoring my windows to earlier checkpoints, which hasn't been successful either.

I too would love some help here.

BenGovett

10 Posts

June 2nd, 2006 06:00

Yep, know that problem, have it too.
 
You can make your speakers work again *temporarily* by going into the Device Manager and disabling/enabling the "SigmaTel High Definition Audio CODEC" sound driver.
 
(right click on My Computer, select "Manage", select "Device Manager" from the tree, then navigate down through "Sound, video and game controllers" to "SigmaTel High Definition Audio CODEC" and right click > Disable, then right click> Enable)
 
The speakers will then work until you reboot next, or plug in Headphones.
 
Problem seems to be that once you plug headphones into your machine ONCE, it thinks you have headphones plugged in all the time, and refuses to redirect sound back through the speakers.
 
I never had the problem at all until the first time I plugged headphones in, and since pluggin in headphones have not been able to get back to having the speakers working after I reboot the machine.
 
As a professional software developer who has been involved in driver development, I'd say this is a DRIVER PROBLEM. And yes, I've tried upgrading/removing/reinstalling/reverting the drivers a number of times.
 
Additionally I've had some BSOD's trying to run games that have intense sound effects, so I'm guessing that the sound drivers Dell are supplying are incredibly badly written.
 
I do hope they get them sorted out as having the sound dead like this makes my expensive new toy seem like a cheap piece of plastic. I bought a Dell as I thought they wouldn't have these kind of annoying defects, but I guess I was wrong.

BenGovett

10 Posts

June 7th, 2006 00:00

Ok... I've solved the problem and here's how.
 
I found that the Diagnostics worked fine, with headphones and without. As I thought it's not hardware, so that leaves drivers.
 
I'd already updated everything I could possibly update from the AU Support Page including Sound, BIOS, Display, Intel Chipset, etc from the following support page....
 
 
That basically gave me R114075.exe from the Dell FTP Site as the most up to date Audio Driver (A03 - v5.10.0.4823)..
 
I decided to go browsing around the Dell FTP Website ( ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/audio) and downloaded every single driver release dated after R114075.exe.  I found that R119989.exe contained a newer driver for the SigmaTel sound device in my machine. (A05 - v5.10.0.4943)
 
I installed it, and it now works fine.
 
I think it would be a good idea for someone to update Dell's Support website to point towards the newer driver for 6400's considering it is available.

BenGovett

10 Posts

June 23rd, 2006 01:00

Try downloading the driver I was talking about if your speakers have stopped working again....

And Dell QuickSet is the utility that displays the volume settings on screen in response to you pressing the media volume up and down buttons.

QuickSet also displays the Brightness Meter when you turn that up and down using Fn and UpArrow/DownArrow.

You should be able to see the QuickSet Icon in the tooltray in the bottom right hand corner of the screen next to the time. Looks like a blue "Q".

If it's not there, you can install it from one of the CDs that comes with your laptop, but not sure which.

sketch1323

4 Posts

June 23rd, 2006 01:00

I had to do a system restore to get my speakers to work again - but when i push my front media buttons (mute,volume,play/pause...blahblahblah) the on-screen volume/mute indicator doesnt show up anymore....anyone know anything about that???

sketch1323

4 Posts

June 23rd, 2006 02:00

fixed the taskbar - thanks!!

sketch1323

4 Posts

June 23rd, 2006 02:00

OOOHHHHHHH!!!! quick/set was the problem --- it used to load into my taskbar automatically -- how do i tell it to start doing that again??

Yea - i installed the drivers you pointed out (i wasnt aware dell even provided drivers)- it fixed it for a short while - but then stopped working again. So i uninstalled them - and tried it all over again. I still have nothing. They are apparently working (the speakers themselves) since i heard them on the start-up after installing the drivers the first time.
I just dont know. This SigmaTel card is not very good!

sketch1323

4 Posts

June 23rd, 2006 04:00

Okay - ive been workin on this for about 3 hours now - uninstalling - reinstalling drivers - looking up other threads and see what other people were doing to fix their problems and none of them are helping me.
I did uninstall the sigmatel codec - and then installed the one dell gives as an updated driver - and the one that was newer found on the FTP page ---- what is the .exe file name of the original driver that may have been installed on my comp. ?? how would i find that out. Maybe i can reinstall the original driver.
i have no idea what is going on with my speakers - and i REALLY dont want to call support because every one who called support said they didnt help worth a lick.

thekid1327

2 Posts

October 9th, 2006 15:00

Can someone please tell me if you can disable internal speaker on a Dell Latitude D620? Thank you much.
 
Matthew Brooks

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