Posted by Yoli/CA on 7/18/10 11:35am
Msg #345444

Laptop advice, please -

I've had my Dell laptop for about 5 years with no problems - 'til now. I seldom use the audio portion. Yesterday, while reading email, got crackling noise for about 10 seconds. Thought nothing of it until about an hour later when I realized I was getting no sound at all.

Looked into control panel audio and it now says "no audio device." So, my question is: Should I just replace sound card (for about $20) or is it time to replace laptop?

Thanks in advance for your honest opinion!!

Reply by Glenn Strickler on 7/18/10 11:47am
Msg #345446

Congratulations on the 5 years. I never made it that long without dropping it or something. I have hope for my current one.

I bought my current Dell laptop from their online outlet store. It might be the time to check there as you will get all the updated software and Windows 7 for just a few hundred dollars depending on your budget and needs. Mine are simple, so I really got a deal. If you are happy with the way it's working right now, then a new sound card may be the way to go in terms of saving money.

But try this first. Go into device manager, left click on audio devices then right click on your device and choose "uninstall" and uninstall it. Then reboot your computer. The driver will re-install automatically. Sometimes some code will drop out of the loaded driver and mimic a bad sound card. Uninstalling and reinstalling the device will sometimes fix these issues ...

Good luck.

Reply by Yoli/CA on 7/18/10 12:32pm
Msg #345452

Glenn, please ck pm n/m

Reply by C. Rivera Chicago Notary Services on 7/18/10 11:50am
Msg #345447

Have you tried going to the dell website to run a diagnostic

It will tell you what hardware you have, then you can look up its shelf life. You may or may not need new sound card, perhaps updated software. But at 5 years old, that's pretty old as far as computers go. Might be best to update more than the sound card. But I'm noooo expert.

I have nothing but Dell computers in my home and office and I always go to the website first for advice.

If all else fails, take it a Best Buy and the Geek squad take a looksie....hope this helps.

Reply by cadmonkey/CA on 7/18/10 1:55pm
Msg #345461

the sound card is usually built into the mobo on laptops so

you cannot just replace it by itself. Most likely you will need to get a new motherboard if you cannot live without sound for your laptop. But I would go with Glenn's excellent advice first and try to troubleshoot the device driver by uninstalling, rebooting, and re-installing it. If that doesn't work, try going to dells support website and see if they have any updated audio drivers for your specific laptop. Even if they don't, just download the one they have and try installing that. Sometimes the device driver files themselves get corrupted and a fresh driver install could do the trick.

Reply by Yoli/CA on 7/18/10 2:03pm
Msg #345462

Thanks, everyone

Followed Glenn's advice. Removed driver and rebooted. No change. Then, downloaded driver from Dell website. Also, no change.

Guess I'll have to buy a new one. Didn't really want to spend any money right now, but ....

Reply by Doris_CO on 7/18/10 11:28pm
Msg #345497

Re: Thanks, everyone

Yoli, the sound card on my husbands laptop died a couple of years ago. He just went out and bought a set of speakers and hooked them up to the laptop. Depending on how you use your laptop, that might be the solution for now until you're really ready to buy a new laptop.

Reply by cadmonkey/CA on 7/19/10 2:46am
Msg #345505

Re: Thanks, everyone

That's true, if you hook up usb speakers to the laptop, you can get sound again, but you would have to keep them connected whenever you want sound....

Reply by BrendaTx on 7/19/10 6:32am
Msg #345508

If the sound card is out, what will drive sound?

I've had soundcards go out in the past and speakers would not work. When that happened (on a desktop) I would replace the sound card and be in business again.

If it is the speakers in the laptop that are broken, that should work, but if it is the entire soundcard I don't think that it will produce sound at all, onboard speakers, or exterior speakers should not make a difference.

Reply by MikeC/NY on 7/19/10 8:58am
Msg #345515

Re: If the sound card is out, what will drive sound?

USB speakers bypass the sound card and have internal circuitry that converts the digital signal to sound. They don't have the sound quality or volume that you can get from a sound card (probably not as useful for listening to MP3s, for instance), but that's because they only do part of the job that a sound card does.

Reply by jba/fl on 7/19/10 9:00am
Msg #345516

resulting in computer speak...lol n/m

Reply by BrendaTx on 7/19/10 9:23am
Msg #345524

Interesting! n/m