headphone jack flakiness

despite plugging my headphones in, nothing is coming through them and sound is still coming out of my onboard speakers. this is a first for me.

i've plugged and unplugged it repeatedly. it is clearly IN there, so i guess it's some weird s/w glitch?

can i do a manual override somehow, and "direct" the signal to the jack?

 

headphone sockets usually have a contact which disconects the speakers when the plug is pushed in, these contacts can fail, which would cause the problem you are having,or dirt could have got in them, causing the same problem, this usually only happens after considerable use however, how old is your machine? how often do you use headphones?

 

Your speakers dont have a headphone socket built into them do they? Lucky shot I guess, but worth a try. maybe also have a look in Control Panel, i thought there was a setting were you can choose the output of sound.

Side note: I have had this problem before, plugged my headphones into the mic socket

 

yeah, i've done the "plug headphones into mic socket" before myself, not even REALIZING it (b/c i could hear the speaker output) until someone came over and informed me i was blasting music to the entire library....

(lucky it wasn't PORN!)

anyway, the current problem went away on reboot, but i am curious to fish around those ctrl panel settings for the next time.

actually, i dunno if there will BE a next time. as i said, this was a first for me.

drivers etc are up to date, btw.

 

man, this is happening more and more lately. it always goes away on reboot, but i'm tired of losing everything else i'm doing to do so.

anyone know how to fix this once and for all -- tweaking DRIVERS or w/e?

or at least how to fix it in place when it occurs, rather than doing a reboot?