Losing Sound On My Pc

[mikey4444]

About once a week or so, I lose all sound on my PC. I leave the PC on and when I come back, I seem to have lost the ability for sound. When I have a look on the little speaker thingy, on the bottom right, it comes up blank.

I am then forced to turn the PC off and start it up again, which seems to cure it.

Some one will ask me what OS I am using....I think its Windows Vista.

[-Talbot-]

Are you losing the sound icon?

[mikey4444]

No, the icon is still there.

[Togo]

Do you have a desk top mikey with speakers or are you on a laptop with internal speakers. Have you got a set of headphones handy?

[mikey4444]

Togo...desk top, with external speakers.

When this happens, I go straight to Control Panel > Sound and I can sometimes fix it from there. Other times I have to reboot.

[Togo]

Another question mikey. You say the sound icon is there when the sound drops out, but when you hover your cursor/pointer over it does a little message pop up saying speakers 100% or a message saying no sound?

[mikey4444]

Togo...its a bit complicated to explain, but .....

If I hover the curser over the sound icon, it either doesn't show anything, or a empty oblong box shoots up. When I try to play a news clip, for instance, there is silence.

It sometime appears that I don't have a sound card installed !

[Togo]

Righto mikey. One of those infuriating problems then. You first need to eliminate the speakers. You can do this by plugging in a set of headphones or seeing if the sound works on your monitor works with them unplugged. If you have no sound with either of the checks does the message from the icon hover say no sound detected? If so we are now asking if the sound card is perhaps overheating and dropping out.( perhaps because you have thrashed it with your music on full blast. Lol) Or is the sound card loose in the motherboard? After that is eliminated we need to ensure that the audio drivers are up to date.

[Togo]

Does the hover over the speaker icon give a message when the sound is working ok mikey?

[mikey4444]

Togo...yes it does but I can't remember what that message is !

I will wait until it happens again and then report back....thanks for your help.

[Togo]

Okay mikey. It may be worth you re-posting when the sound issue raises it ugly head again and someone will no doubt walk you through a set of checks. If I am on at that time I promise to help. At least you have an idea at what you are looking for though.

[mikey4444]

Thanks Togo !