Having problems with your computer’s audio device? Check to make sure your able to hook up head phones or another set of speakers to your computer first. It is possible that you are having an issue with your sound card driver, if your not able to hear any sound when hooking up different headphones or speakers.
If it is indeed a problem with the computer sound driver you can go to “Start” then “Control Panel” in Microsoft Windows operating system. Go into “Device Manager” and see if there is a yellow exclamation point next to your audio device. If the yellow exclamation point exists you can right click the audio device and select delete.
There is a refresh icon in the Microsoft Windows device manager that you can click after deleting the audio device. Device Manager will find the audio device again and try to install the drivers for it again. If windows update is enabled it will try to download the drivers from the internet other wise you will be prompted for your installation media. For example, your original sound card CD-ROM or Microsoft Windows CD-ROM.
I want to warn you that if you permanently delete your sound card driver and you do NOT have the driver CD-ROM when you purchased it, then you could have potentially caused yourself further time. I would make certain whether or not you still possess this driver CD-ROM. If you are dealing with an integrated sound device then you may or may not have received a drivers CD-ROM from the original equipment manufacturer.
If you do NOT possess a audio device sound driver CD-ROM then you can search for it on the Internet. Microsoft does NOT always provide a sound card or audio device driver. You may have to look for the sound driver on the manufacturer’s website.
Also, you can often times search for sound drivers from computer manufacturers. For example Dell, Lenovo, Hewlett Packard, etc. Newer Microsoft Windows operating systems give you basically two choices when it comes to removing the sound driver.
You will be given the choice to uninstall the driver and then there maybe a check box labeled “Delete the driver software for this device”. If you know that you do NOT possess this audio driver, then I would not delete the driver. This will leave you with an audio device or sound card that lacks a driver.
This means that you will NOT be able to get it functional without the driver. However, deleting the driver from your computer can be advantageous in situations where that audio driver has become corrupt. Another way to potentially provide a sound fix, is to update your audio driver.
Microsoft operating systems will attempt to search for an update to your sound driver. This may just fix your problem. Also, you can just uninstall your sound device from device manager.
Then you can restart your computer. Microsoft Windows operating system will then detect your sound device again and install the audio driver that is still located on your computer’s hard drive. I always warn people about permanently deleting a driver from Microsoft Windows operating systems.
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