Multimedia Sound, Part 3: If You Still Don't Have Sound
If you don't have sound after following the guidelines in the second installment of this series, then you may have to make additional preliminary adjustments.
Click on Start, Settings, Control Panel, and look for two icons labeled Multimedia and Sound. If you don't have those files, then a technician will have to help you.
If you do have the files, yet you still don't have sound, then a bit of tinkering may help. You won't have to pay a technician, though. Your nine-year-old neighborhood techie kid will take just a few seconds to click on both of these icons and to make the necessary adjustments, based on the needs for your computer. Ignore his comments about how you couldn't figure out something that was so easy, and about the older generation, and so on.
Now that it works, check the Task Bar. That's usually at the bottom of your screen, and it has the Start button at one end and a clock at the other end. The clock is located in the system tray, which is a smaller, indented area. Together with the clock, you will find several icons, hopefully including a little yellow speaker (this speaker appears in Windows 95, 98, 2000, and ME, but it does not appear in Windows NT). Double-click on that speaker and check the resulting window. One of the several columns should say Volume. Click the handle of the slider. While still holding it down, drag the slider upwards so that the volume is louder.
Look at the bottom of that Volume column. A check box asks whether you want the computer sound to be muted. If it is checked, then you won't hear anything from your multimedia speakers - no matter what other settings have been adjusted. Be sure that it is not checked.
Click OK to leave this dialogue box. Double-click on a sound file and listen for sound. If you forgot how to find a sound file, go back to the second installment in this series for instructions.
In most cases, your sound will work at this point. If it still doesn't work, then you will know that you've done everything you possibly can without being a technician yourself. You will then have to take the computer to a professional. He has to earn a living too, you know.
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