Click here for other articles relating to solutions to problems of computer sound.

This article will relate to a particular Windows 98 system that had been working well. In a particular system everything seemed to be okay and seemed to be working properly. The speakers made some little noises of static when the plug was removed and put back into the outlet (that’s a nice cute little trick by the way to see if the speakers are working properly although it isn’t foolproof because it only proves that the speakers can emit static and not necessarily sound. However, that’s a reasonable quick and dirty check). On this particular computer the sound system seemed to be set up okay; the speakers emitted some static; everything was plugged in properly; the control panel multimedia and control panel sound seemed to be working properly. Technically everything seemed to be okay. The Windows indicated that the driver was fine. There was no reason for there to be a problem – except for the fact of course that it didn’t work. But that’s apparently a minor detail, right?

Upon in further investigation I discovered that there was another music jukebox controller the program that had been set up although there was no icon for it. A jukebox let them play sequence or a series of songs one after the other according to their selection and choice. They did play these songs previously but they complained that now the jukebox also had some problem and was not working. I tested it out and indeed that was not working.

Upon further investigation it turns out that there was yet another music program that had been installed, apparently by one of the many games that were used by the children in the family. Both of these secondary music systems had an interesting characteristic. They controlled the Windows sound. In other words, there was a sickbox that said that when Windows wants to play its sound it will have to first go through this program.

That adds a level of complexity to the system. That means that if either the Windows sound is corrupt or if the additional programs either of the two additional programs is corrupt since one goes through the other before allowing the third one to play then nothing will work. The thing to do had to be I had to disable programs to see what’s going on. Obviously, the Windows sound system would have to remain. Everything did ultimately feed through that although it was in effect disabled because the sound had to go through the new programs. I deleted one program and it didn’t help. I deleted the second program and it did not help. I tried restarting, and that did not help, and I then deleted the driver Windows driver and reinstalled the Windows driver and then I was able to get full sound for the computer.

Of course, you might say that the Windows driver may have been corrupted and if I had deleted that first then all of the other programs may have worked. Perhaps. We’ll never know. However, we do know that there’s the potential for a problem if there is more than one device which controls the sound in a computer and that when the Windows sound doesn’t work, especially in a strange computer then it’s a good idea to check some devices that are controlling the sound. This will not necessarily show up in the control panel systems listing. In our case it showed up in the control panel Add/Remove Programs only directory.

Click here for more articles about making your Windows sound work.

Click here for articles about computer graphics.

Click here for more articles about troubleshooting your computer.

Set system sound – from speaker itself; putting the speaker in the tray by clicking on the box in System, Multimedia

TODAY'S TIP: SETTING THE SOUND SYSTEM VOLUME

Here is a tip from subscriber Armand C.: "I find that I often need to change the sound system volume as I navigate through the Internet. Some sites have very loud audio, while others aren't loud enough. The way I have my system set up, it's inconvenient to reach the speaker volume control, so I've been double-clicking the Speaker icon in the taskbar to set the volume. I only now discovered that you don't have to open the Volume Control dialog box to set the volume--all you have to do is click the speaker icon once to open only the master volume control. Using this method, it's very easy to change the volume as you surf the Internet."

Thanks for the tip, Armand.