If the sound does not work

It's pretty unpleasant, when after the next turning on the computer and loading the operating system it becomes obvious that the sound does not work. Not only the specific programs, but even the playing of musical compositions occurs in complete silence. In addition, often this is accompanied by the fact that the sound does not work in browsers. To determine the malfunction, you will have to perform a number of points.

A bit of theory

There are three types of sound cards - built-in, discrete and external. The first are the chips of HD Audio codecs or obsolete AC97, which are part of the motherboard. This is a mass product, the sound of which is quite acceptable to most users. In addition, this is the standard for laptops. The latter are dedicated expansion cards that plug into the internal PCI or PCI-E connector of the motherboard. As a rule, qualitative and reliable solutions can be found in this group. And, finally, there are external audio adapters connected to the USB connector. Regardless of the performance, they all work on the same principle: a special program controls the operation of the card, receiving commands from the operating system. Accordingly, if the sound does not work, then the cause can be both hardware (physical failure) and software (driver failure).

From simple to complex

If the sound does not work, then do not immediately disassemble the system unit or uninstall the driver - it always succeeds. Very often, the reason is trivial and solved by two mouse clicks. First of all, you need to check the sound level, since some applications, instead of adjusting the volume only for yourself, change it for the whole system.

Near the clock in the lower right corner there is a picture of the speaker. Pressing it once with the left mouse button, you can check the status of the audio slider. It should be set at 50-80% of the total scale. Here there is a link "Mixer". It is also useful to check it. For example, sometimes people complain that the Opera does not work sound, but all because it is here that the volume is set to zero for this application.

Next, you need to check whether the plug of the audio cable has dropped out of the card connector - sometimes you need to slightly shift the system unit so that the sound disappears. It is not superfluous to check the status of the volume control on the speakers, headphones or amplifier. However, sometimes it even turns out to be ineffective - the sound does not work.

In this case, you have to go deeper into the settings of the operating system itself.

If the label "Computer" is placed on the desktop, then everything is quite simple, otherwise you will have to look it up in the "Start" menu. Calling the "Computer" properties, you must specify the "Management" link and at the bottom in "Services and applications" select the first item of service settings. In the list, find Windows Audio and specify the automatic startup type for it.

Next, in Device Manager (Computer properties), you need to open a section of audio, video and game components and make sure that the sound card is present here. Next, you should determine its type and download the driver from the developer's site. The name can be found using the AIDA64 program or read in the specification to the board (for the built-in solution), the card, the device (discrete options). In the case of a laptop, you need to install the driver from the disk, which is always given with the computer.

If this did not help, you should make sure that the sound card is not prohibited in the BIOS of the motherboard.