Windows 7 speakers on laptop suddenly stop working

[Halwho]

Windows 7 laptop speakers suddenly stopped working with no apparent changes made. Reboot no solution. Lost -- any ideas?

 

[Pauli]

Are they internal or external speakers? In any case, either the speakers have ended their lifetime, or there has been an update of some sort, cutting them off. You might try a restore / recover point, Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Backup and Restore. Take your system to a point where you know it was working.

No one else has been messing with your computer?

 

[Halwho]

Are they internal or external speakers? In any case, either the speakers have ended their lifetime, or there has been an update of some sort, cutting them off. You might try a restore / recover point, Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Backup and Restore. Take your system to a point where you know it was working.

No one else has been messing with your computer?

 

[Halwho]

Are they internal or external speakers? In any case, either the speakers have ended their lifetime, or there has been an update of some sort, cutting them off. You might try a restore / recover point, Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Backup and Restore. Take your system to a point where you know it was working.

No one else has been messing with your computer?

Only me at the keyboard, but you could say Google Chrome messed with it. I got a suspicious-looking notice that Chrome was back-level and click here to update. I thought it may have been misspelled, with a missing letter in the middle of the link, but stupidly thought it looked genuine. During the install, I was offered other products to install, said no in each case, and ended up with an "Internet Helper toolbar" hogging window space. I disabled that, uninstalled the program(which said for IE), but the toolbar keeps popping up now and then. So I messed up by believing that damn message, and running some crap. I'm hoping a full scan by Microsoft Security Essentials will pick up something (by the way, the unwelcome toolbar found some kind of "threat" too!)

Sounds like a restore/recover point might help, too. Damn.

Thanks for your interest and good ideas. Also, they're internal speakers on a year-old Lenovo laptop.

 

[strollin]

Have you checked the "little" things such as making sure the sound output isn't muted or the volume turned down? What happens when you plug in headphones?

Right-click on the speaker icon in the System Tray and select "Playback Devices", are the speakers selected? Check Device Manager to see if it reports any issue with your sound driver.

 

[Halwho]

Have you checked the "little" things such as making sure the sound output isn't muted or the volume turned down? What happens when you plug in headphones?

Right-click on the speaker icon in the System Tray and select "Playback Devices", are the speakers selected? Check Device Manager to see if it reports any issue with your sound driver.

More really good ideas, thanks. No headphones available (gasp) but tried all else, checked all. Ran full scan w/MS Security Essentials, ran bitclean, will reboot but no change in spkr status yet, will system restore to point a few days ago later...

 

[Halwho]

More really good ideas, thanks. No headphones available (gasp) but tried all else, checked all. Ran full scan w/MS Security Essentials, ran bitclean, will reboot but no change in spkr status yet, will system restore to point a few days ago later...

Rebooted a minute ago, speakers came back! No idea why, but I'll take what I can get. Thanks all.

 

[strollin]

Yes, my suggestion of trying the "little" things should have included rebooting as well. Glad you got it working.

 

[Halwho]

Yes, my suggestion of trying the "little" things should have included rebooting as well. Glad you got it working.

The fact is that I did try a few reboots along the way, but I think the bitclean I ran, followed by a reboot, is the thing that somehow reset it. One more of those unexplained things where you keep doing stuff until something works. Thanks again for your interest and help.