I'm afraid this is going to be a very ambiguous post and I'm not sure if anyone's gonna be able to help me.

I purchased a Dell XPS430 in march 2009 with Windows Vista installed, and completely wiped it and replaced with Windows 7 in October 2009. This went seamlessly and everything has worked perfectly until just very recently.

There is no sound coming from my speakers.

They are not muted. The sound is turned up. The default audio playback device in the control panel is set to "speakers/headphones" as it was before. The sound icon in the taskbar shows that the computer *thinks* it is playing sounds.

There is no sound when plugged in to the audio jack at the back of the PC and they do not work when plugged in to the audio jack at the front of the PC.

The speakers themselves still work. They work fine when plugged in to another PC. They make noise when I touch the end of the audio jack.

Device manager shows two "High Definition Audio Device" instances under "Sound". There are no issues with either of these HD Audio devices. I have tried downloading the Windows Vista 64 bit drivers and installing from the dell support web site but this makes no difference other than renaming the one to "IDT High Definition Audio Codec". I tried removing the devices and then allowing windows 7 to automatically find drivers from windows update; this makes no difference either, they're just both renamed to "High Definition Audio Device".

Now here comes the oddity.

A few days ago I got fed up with this, unplugged the power from the PC, took the case apart and blew the dust off the motherboard. This was all I did, I didn't unplug anything or touch anything.

Then; after reassembling the case and plugging everything back in, the sound worked again.. for a couple of days. Overnight over the weekend however it has stopped working again.

Oh; I should mention that this is integrated audio (ie on the motherboard) and that it is 100% definitely enabled in BIOS ("Integrated Audio -> Enabled")

Any ideas? :(

Edited 3 February, 201016 yr by yegnold

Cant you claim on warranty Ed and get a new one? Your still within your 12 months, just!

it seems to be a popular problem when searched via Google

http://www.google.co.uk/#hl=en&q=no+sound+windows+7&start=10&sa=N&fp=16ac4e1d5a5114bb

Problem is mate most of the Win 7 "No sound" issues are from people that have never had any sound on Windows 7.

Alex: not sure. Would Dell honour the warranty even if I have replaced the Operating System? I guess I'm looking for proof that it is a hardware fault really?

I don't see why not Ed. I guess you could download something like the ubuntu live cd and see if the sound works on that? That will tell you if you have a hardware issue or not?