why do I keep losing sound?

TrishaM

why does my laptop keep losing sound. when I check the control panel and sounds, and look for volume control it is not there on some occasions then on others it is there and sound is available. at the moment it has gone but when I turned the laptop off last night I had sound. any ideas?

Lil306

I'm not sure if it's the same thing, but Windows sometimes gets a weird problem where the Sound service doesn't restart properly on startup

Try going to start - run - compmgmt.msc - services

Find the sound one, (Windows Audio, or Sounds) something like that. Right click - properties.
Change the recovery settings to restart on all of them for 1st failure, 2nd failure, 3rd failure, etc.

TrishaM

that has worked, will keep an eye on it.. many thanks..prob should do a complete re-install and there is soo much crap on here after 5 years... many thanks for your time and suggestion. appreciated

TrishaM

sound has gone again! when I go on to sounds and audio devices in control panel and click on the volume tab it shows RealtekAC97 audio and device volume greyed out and set at low. you cannot adjust this. when you open the audio tab you do not have a volume control...??? any ideas anyone??? Laptop running XP. could it be caused by heat?

Lil306

Apologies, my earlier post was just a hunch not a solution to the problem

Try going into device manager (start - run - devmgmt.msc), look for anything which has been expanded

Have you tried doing a Windows update to make sure your sound drivers are up to date?

Also consider looking under the log files in event viewer under compmgmt.msc for system / application. If you see some red or warning signs it could be a reason of the problem