anyone else have this sound issue?

i've had this problem on my laptop for a while now. I posted earlier but I'm still having problems with my sound. Problem is this: sometimes the sound works, sometimes not. I was just Instant Messaging and listening to music a few minutes ago and the sound was fine. Then i went to Youtube to watch some videos and guess what? no sound. I went back to instant messenger and music to see if the sound was there but it was gone!!! Also noticed that when i pushed the button on the keyboard to increase the sound, nothing happened...there were no bars indicating any sound. I went to device manager to see if the device showed a problem and it said the device was working properly. In the past, i've un-installed and re=installed which worked but only temporarily.

Reason I ask if anyone else has had this problem is because a friend who works with computers has seen this a lot lately. Could there be a problem with a windows update that's causing several computers to show such symptoms? Perhaps a "corrupted" driver or something?

Try some drivers on this CD: http://www.link.io/index.php/showlink?search=drivers+cd&id=90127&type=-1

Or try alternative drivers from www.driversguide.com

It sounds a lot like a driver corruption issue. You need to remove the drivers in Device Manager, then go and manually delete the files in use by the driver.

Do you have more than one audio device installed on your computer, eg. USB headset or similar? It may be that some programs are defaulting to the wrong device.

It sounds a lot like a driver corruption issue. You need to remove the drivers in Device Manager, then go and manually delete the files in use by the driver.

Do you have more than one audio device installed on your computer, eg. USB headset or similar? It may be that some programs are defaulting to the wrong device.

dumb question....How do i know if I have more than one audio device installed? Do I look in Device Manager and see what's listed there?
When I go to Control Panel, then to Sound and Audio Devices, I look at the "volume" "audio" and "voice" tabs and no options are availiable....they all say "no audio device" or "no playback devices"

However, under Hardware, here's what's listed:
Slimtype DVD...
Conexant HD Audio
Audio Codecs
Legacy Audio Drivers
Media Control Devices
Legacy Video Capture Devices
Video Codecs

when I click on the properties of each of those, it says that each is working properly.

I will look into those links you posted. Any other info is appreciated!

If it says there's no sound device installed, it's almost definately a driver issue.

This is the one you need new drivers for:
Conexant HD Audio

great, thanks!! I went to HP.com and looked at the drivers where, sure enough, for my notebook and O.S., there are two audio drivers. I will probably download them both:
» Conexant High Definition Audio Driver (http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?softwareitem=ob-45570-1&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=3224052&os=228&lang=en)
» Microsoft Universal Audio Architecture (UAA) Bus Driver for High Definition Audio (sp33867) (http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?softwareitem=ob-47284-1&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=3224052&os=228&lang=en)

After installing, I'll repost with my findings. thanks again!

**UPDATE** After dealing with this annoying sound issue for quite a while, I've finally got it solved....sort of. I chatted live with an "hp technician" a few times and that helped somewhat. I installed some drivers. Then they had me go to "start" click "run" type in "services.msc"...from that menu I went to "Windows Audio" and changed the setting to "STARTED"....that solved the problem!!!! yay I have sound! However, each time I restart the computer, I have to do the above steps to enable sound. At least I can have sound, but it's annoying. Does anyone know why I would have to go in and change the setting every time? thanks

Does the Windows Audio service have the Startup type listed as "Automatic" ?

If not, set it to automatic, and reboot. If it's listed as automatic, but it doesn't start, have a look in the System Event Logs for a reason why it failed.

it is set to automatic. however I have to manually start it every time I restart. How do I find the "system event logs"? thank you

Right click My Computer, click Manage, Expand Event Viewer, Select System.

i opened that list and there were like a thousand listings. Hard to tell which would be the one I'm looking for. The only one [that i've found so far] that mentions "windows audio" says that the windows audio service has entered a running state...I guess that's when I started it. Each listing does provide a link to microsoft help and support, but doesn't really provide any information that I find necessary.

Try clearing the logs and rebooting. Look for a warning or an error (yellow or red) that relates to the Sound driver. Copy and paste the results here.

thanks again for your help. I finally solved it!!! After I went to START-RUN--typed "services.msc" and went to WINDOWS AUDIO, I had it set to AUTOMATIC and STARTED, however the problem was that it wasn't saving my setting on restart. I was looking around in that menu and I found the setting that solved it....when I double clicked on WINDOWS AUDIO, and went to the RECOVERY tab, I noticed that it wasn't set to restart the service after a failure. I changed it to RESTART THE SERVICE (after the first failure) and to RESTART THE SERVICE AFTER 1 minute. That solved the problem. I did that about a week ago and haven't had a sound problem since. I'm not sure why there was a problem in the first place, but it's nice to have it back working properly. I've said it before and it bares repeating: these systems seem to have a mind of their own and they like to change settings and do things without the user's control. Lousy windows! I'm going MAC next time for sure!

:):)