Problem solved. Thanks for your valuable assistance. I'm going to try and mark you as the best problem solver. That Fernando Terra's post although filled with good information ultimately did not provided a solution. As a last resort I decided to check into your early suggestion of a problem with the driver. At first it didn't seem like a likely solution considering that the laptop was two months old and had never had a correctly working speaker headphone system. I did find a better realtek driver and it fixed the problem. The lesson learned is too don't assume any computer came from the factory properly loaded, no matter how new it is. Too others who may read this I say always start troubleshooting a problem by looking for a driver update. Best wishes to all.