I'd like help getting the sound on my laptop to work again, and also
understand what went wrong in the first place, so the successful
answer is two parts: Get the sound working, and help me understand
what's going on.
Here are the details:
I have a Dell Latitude CPx laptop, it's probably about 3 years old,
with a Pentium III and 256 Meg of RAM. It's running Windows 2000 Pro,
SP3, ver. 5.00.2195. It used to be running Window NT 4 up til about a
year ago, and when it was running WinNT 4, the sound always worked
perfectly. I manually upgraded to Win2000 using a CD. After that,
the sound did work off and on for a period of a few weeks, maybe it
worked for a dozen boots or so. If the sound came up when it booted,
it would work for the entire session, until I rebooted, and then it
may or may not work. Now, the sound hasn't worked at all for several
months. The ctrl-G beep works, but that's it.
I tried rebooting in Safe Mode, and still no sound.
I'm a professional computer-person, so don't be afraid to get
technical with the answer, but I'm not a Wintel guy, I'm most
comfortable with Unix systems. The more I have to use Windows, the
more I hate it. |
Request for Question Clarification by
feilong-ga
on
07 Nov 2002 19:41 PST
Hi davz-ga! It looks like this is a driver problem. Can you identify
your sound device or at least tell me the complete laptop model name
so that we could look for a suitable driver?
By the way, when you boot on safe mode, the peripheral devices are
disabled that's why you cannot hear sound from your sound device.
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Clarification of Question by
davz-ga
on
07 Nov 2002 19:45 PST
Also, if I go to the Win2000 'troubleshooter' for my sound card, I get
'An error has occurred in the script on this page.' Line 3, Char 2,
Object doesn't support this property or method, Code 0, URL
mk:@MSITStore:C:\WINNT\Help\tshoot.chm::/tshardw_result.htm
Gotta love Windows.
|
Clarification of Question by
davz-ga
on
07 Nov 2002 19:48 PST
Thanks for your help, it is a Dell Latitude CPx Notebook CPtC550C,
Service Tag 5XEH2. Is that what you need?
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Request for Question Clarification by
feilong-ga
on
07 Nov 2002 19:52 PST
Dell CPx series has an H and J model. Which one is yours -- CPx H or J?
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Clarification of Question by
davz-ga
on
07 Nov 2002 19:54 PST
It says 'Latitude C Family' on the bottom... the Service Tag has an H
in it, maybe it's an H?? Not sure how I find out.
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Request for Question Clarification by
feilong-ga
on
07 Nov 2002 20:06 PST
I'm not quite familiar with Dell but I think it's a CPx H. Anyway, in
most cases, especially in series models, peripheral devices are often
the same. Another question, did you reformat the drive when you
shifted from NT to Win2000? Although in some cases this is possible,
it is best if you have reformatted the drive first before you switched
to Win2000. If you did, you only need to go to Dell's support page
(http://support.dell.com/us/en/register.asp?redirect=yes), register,
and download the necessary drivers for Win2000. That's it. We should
expect that your problem will be solved after that. I hope this works.
|
Clarification of Question by
davz-ga
on
07 Nov 2002 20:13 PST
Well, you know what, after you pointed out that it might be a driver
problem, I went to the Dell web-site and downloaded the latest driver,
and now my sound works again! Thanks for pointing me in that
direction.
I am still puzzled as to why it was working off and on after the
upgrade to Win2000, and why it stopped working altogether after a few
weeks.
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Clarification of Question by
davz-ga
on
07 Nov 2002 20:14 PST
And no I did not format my hard drive for the upgrade, it was 'in-place.'
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Request for Question Clarification by
feilong-ga
on
07 Nov 2002 20:18 PST
Good for you davz-ga! Do you want me to post an explanation as an
answer so that you will have an idea and understand what happened?
It's ok if you don't want me to. If so, thanks for visiting the site.
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Request for Question Clarification by
feilong-ga
on
07 Nov 2002 20:19 PST
Good for you davz-ga! See, I told you this was a simple driver
problem. Do you want me to post an explanation as an answer so that
you will have an idea and understand what happened? It's ok if you
don't want me to. If so, thanks for visiting the site.
|
Clarification of Question by
davz-ga
on
08 Nov 2002 03:10 PST
feilong-ga, I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to withdraw the
question, I'll tell you what, I have a few more things on this laptop
that need fixing, I will give you first opportunity to help me there,
thanks.
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