Sound Card Problems
Your computer may be experiencing sound problems like buzzing, breaking of the sound stream or your computer may not have sound at all, and other problems. If you are not experienced with a particular problem it is best to call some computer repair service.
If you are wondering what causes your sound card to stop working or makes problems, you should know that there are many things you can check by yourself.
See if the speakers are plugged into a power source. There are some old speakers that used batteries as a power source, if you have those check the batteries because they may be empty.
There is a big number of old sound adapters and laptops that have manual volume dial. You should try to position your volume dial in the middle and not to far on the sides, because it can turn off the volume.
Have you installed the driver for your sound card?
There are cases when people reinstall operating systems on their personal computers and they forget to install the drivers. Some motherboards have soundcards implemented on them and you can find sound drivers on installation disc for your motherboard. Sound cards that are not implemented on motherboards have driver installation discs too. Best way is to find most recent driver for particular sound device and download it from device manufacturer’s official site. Then you can install it and solve the problem.
There are cases when system plays audio files fine but it can’t play music CD’s. Look for a hidden mute in software, maybe someone muted it or you did it by accident, there are cases when it is auto/muted. Also check cables in your computer tower, maybe some of the cables are not connected as they should be.
If you only have built in integrated motherboard sound support you should check if it is enabled in CMOS. And if you are using a sound card you should check if the motherboard sound device is disabled, it can make a conflict and mute all sounds. There is a possibility when the system can’t recognize your sound card after previous steps. Try to unplug your sound card manually if it’s a plug and play sound card, and remove any other adapters except your video card. After those reboot your computer and let your BIOS adjust and configure. After that step shut down your computer and replace your sound card, just to see if that can get it going. If it works now, you might have problems again when you put the other adapters back in. If you do it one at a time you can know where the conflict appears.
If none of the above helps, it is advised to call some help and support center or a computer repair service. They can determine if the sound card can be fixed or you maybe need to buy another. These services are great and they can accurately find what the problem is and fix computer in no time.