My computer has lost it's volume

Hello, I hope I am posting this is the correct section of the Forum. I don't know very much about computers so please forgive any mistaken terms.

I have lost the volume on my Sony Vaio (Vista) laptop.

I think it may have happened when I was playing a video on a website and muted it, but I am not certain. When I went back to that video after muting it, there was no mute/unmute button anymore.

The mute on the volume icon in the lower right corner is not activated, and the volume indicator goes up and down when I play something (e.g., YouTube video, iTunes).

I have tried clearing my cookies/cache and restarting my computer.

I believe the volume must somehow be working because the Windows sounds play upon startup and shutdown.

I'd be so grateful for any suggestions. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

 

Right-click on the volume icon and select "open volume mixer". There should be several volume bars showing. Are any of them muted or turned down low?

 

I followed your instruction, and there are two volume bars. One says Speaker/HP and the other says Windows Sounds. Both are on maximum volume.

The strange this is, I think I remeber when clicking this before, I had five or six sets of settings, and the bars were red. It seems to look different now, but I certainly could be incorrect.

 

The amount of bars depend on which applications you're running. If you got iTunes, live messenger and media player running you'll have one for each of them.

Lets try something else.
Go to start->control panel->hardware and sound->sound.
This control panel will show your audio devices. Does the one called "speakers" have a green checkmark next to it? If it does, right-click on it and select "test".
If "speakers" does not have a green checkmark, right-click on it and select "set as default device" and test.

 

Thank you for helping me, Sharagoz.

I followed your instructions again, this was my result:

The box that came up had 3 tabs - Playback, Recording and Sound.

Playback has a green checkmark, and it says Speaker/HP - Realtek High Definition Audio - Working.


I right-clicked and selected "test." The volume indicator bars went up and down like there should have been sound, but I heard none.

 

The next thing I'd try is to reinstall the sound device.
This is how you do it:
Press the windows key and the R key at the same time to open the run dialog box.
Type in "devmgmt.msc" (without quotes) and press enter
In the control panel that opens, scroll down to "sound, video and game controllers" and expand it.
Under it you should find a device called something like "Realtek High Definition Audio".
Right-click on it and select "uninstall".
After the device is gone, restart your computer twice. On the first reboot your computer should detect new hardware and install it. After that is done, reboot again and the new (reinstalled) device will be activated.

Do you know if you installed any realtek updates or windows updates lately?
Do you know the model number of your Sony Vaio?

 

Thank you so much, Sharagoz!

It was very scary to do, but I have my sound back now! I've spent my whole morning trying to fix this, and with your help it's working properly in just a few minutes time.

Mostly, I am glad I do not have to spend the money and suffer the agony of taking my computer to Circuit City again.

Thanks to MajorGeeks for this nice help forum (which I just learned of today), and special thanks to you, Sharagoz! For your kindness, instruction and time.

Cheers!

 

No problem, I'm glad it worked out for you