Cant get my spdif jack to work.

Hi all, Im having problems with my spdif jack. with earphones or external speakers it doesn't work. but before it failed, the volume was extrmely low. for now if i double click the volume control panel, i can see the spdif column is pale as if disabled.

The last time i made a strong effort to get it working, i could nolonger log onto my computer all together, it would start up to the password point, i wud ente my password, while it was loading, a loud sharp whine would come from the speakers and nothing would load. then an blue screen with an with an error messae would come up. I tried logging on but that kept happening then eventually i left it. after a while it switched o properly

I stopped tryig to get to work out of fear of killing my machine. its an ACER
ASPIRE 3682WXMi, windows XP.

How do i fix this please?:cry

 

The SPDIF jack is strictly for digital audio signals, not analog. That jack is for connecting to an amplifier/receiver with a digital audio input (SPDIF).

Earphones or speakers with an analog amplifier will not work. Try plugging those into the green colored jack on the sound card.

 

thanks pokeyboy boy but... there is no green coloured jack on the laptop and there is a black one with earphones symbol and spdif writen next to it, another with a symbol of a mic and lately one with brackets, even im not sure whats that for. so the earphones symbol are designated for the same jack with spdif... where do i go from here?

 

I have an HP laptop. In the audio setup it has a provision to select an analog or digital device. I only use the analog and have never tried the digital device. It looks like the earphone jack can output which ever one you select.

Go to Control Panel and find Sounds or Audio to see if there is a provision to change the audio device.

 

There is no option for audio or digital. my sound functions are managed by realtek HD sound manager. the closest it got to seeing any other options for audio and stuff was volume- where i was meant to choose the speaker set up on my laptop. other than that no joy. could disabled hardware in device manager affect its functions, tho it does work when it feels like it.AXSAKI SCSI controller and SCSI/RAID controller were disabled months ago, but I haven't noted any negative efects. they were making the laptop act funny, but all sound devices are enabled. Might this affect it?