interesting Audio problem

[Pvt.Dancer]

So I got another interesting one to get some opinions on as google is failing me.

I have a laptop here and it will not play audio through the built in speakers. normally not to hard to diagnose right? Well normally that would be true but I discovered that the Audio will play through the built in speakers IF you play a test tone through an alternate sound device. This sound device is labeled as a head set.

So far my only real idea I have gotten is that the headphone jack is messed up and thinks there is still something in it causing it to mute the speakers though when I plug in headphones there is no audio.

This is a windows 7 laptop and I have reinstalled drivers and updated them as well and checked all of the settings that windows allows to make sure that the built in speakers are in fact set as the default audio device.

Thanks for any ideas you might have.

 

[ozzlo]

I've seen something similar to what you describe. The laptop thought there were headphones plugged in when indeed there were none. The issue was resolved by plugging in a set of headphones and unplugging them.

Perhaps the headphone jack has suffered damage (such as the headphone cord getting tripped over). With the headphones plugged in, try wiggling the jack just a little bit to see if you can hear sound from either the headphones or speakers for a brief moment. I had problems with another jack in the past because I was plugging in a mono headset and it did not like it for some reason even though it should have been backwards compatible (silly cellphones).

Another idea is that it could be some weird setting in advanced settings like faded all the way to the right channel and then the right channel volume is 0.

 

[Pvt.Dancer]

I checked all the advanced settings already but that idea with the Headphone jack makes a lot of sense because I couldn't get headphones working with it either. I think the laptop is under warranty but this users is leaving with the laptop for a month so I can't just get it repaired... It will have to be done just after she gets back I suppose.

But that right there is just confirming what I was leaning towards. Thank you for the reply.