Sudden silence from your computer with no apparent cause can be quite frustrating. You may not be able to hear any sounds at all, or you may be able to listen to music saved onto your computer, but not hear audio on websites such as YouTube.
The first thing that you should do is check to make sure that you do not have the sound muted. To do this, double-click on the small speaker icon on your task menu–the area all the way to the right on your taskbar. Remove and checks from the checkboxes beside ‘Mute’, and then try to play a sound or video again. If you still do not have sound, make sure that your speakers are plugged in, powered on, hooked securely into the audio outlet on the back of the computer, and turned up. Another problem that causes audio function to be lost is corrupt or missing codecs. Codecs are essential to decompressing and playing back media files. Make sure all of your drivers are up to date, uninstalling and then reinstalling them if necessary. Also, check your Device Manager to be sure that there are no conflicts with your sound card.
If you’re running Windows XP and you suddenly run into an audio problem not caused by hardware or codecs, the likely culprit is your registry. The registry contains commands that instruct your computer on how to operate. Without the registry, your computer cannot function. The registry also records all of the actions taken on your computer, such as installations, uninstalls, and downloads, even if these actions were not succesful. As time passes, your registry can become cluttered with useless keys. The solution is to clean the registry. You should not attempt to do this clean the registry manually unless you an expert, as the registry is very sensitive and complex. There are many free registry cleaner programs available that will clean the registry for you and remove any unneeded keys, as well as alert you to any potentially malicious code.
Be wary when choosing a registry cleaner to download. You will run across many programs that claim to be free. In most cases, these are not actually registry cleaners, but registry scanners. They will scan the registry, present you with a list of keys that can be safely removed, and then ask for payment in order to perform these actions. Malware–viruses, malicious programs, adware, and spyware–often disguises itself as a helpful software, like a registry cleaner, in order to dupe the uninformed computer user into downloading it. These types of malware are the most dangerous, because since they are diguised as antivirus or PC cleaning tools, they have permission to get into and alter the very foundations of your operating system. For that reason, it is best to spend a bit of money to purchase a reputable registry cleaning tool. Find a good program, clean out your registry and reboot your computer. Repeat the process as many times as it necessary to completely clean the registry.
Following these simple steps should fix most audio problems. If you continue to experience difficulties, it is likely that you have a faulty sound card, and will have to purchase a new one.
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