my desktop has no sound need some help

Recently my desktop has had several problems I guess in the past about 2 years but for the past 6 months or so things have been fine until 4 or 5 days ago I turned it on and there is no sound. Everything in the device manger is fine and my speakers work. When I try to play anything on Windows media the play bar goes really fast but there is no sound. Nero playtime seems to play normal but no sound. Sometimes it will start playing fine and than sound like it's skipping before it stops completely. My log on and log off sounds don't play at all either. Also I was copying a movie for my sister and when I put it in to make sure it played the picture went really fast but with no sound. I know it could be my sound card but would that cause the overly fast play? It was playing fine the day before all this started and I haven't added any new software and it hasn't had internet for about 2 years now. I ran all my disk cleanup, defrag, cleaned off programs and such I didn't need thinking maybe my hard drive was bogged down but it's still the same. Any suggestions?

 

If you try playing the same video/song does it always go weird in the same way every time, or will the same video/song work fine one day and fail the next? If it's always the same files going weird, it's probably a codec problem.

Have you been getting messages pop up or are you just seeing/hearing weird things like this? If it's errors, then you might have a slowly failing hard drive or memory module or Windows issue.

Is the problem worse the longer your computer is on for? If so, it may be a heat problem, possibly from very dusty fans in your computer.

Here are the things I'd check in order:
1. Turn the computer off, remove the power cord, press the power button - this is very important as it discharges some beefy capacitors in your computer and should always be done before looking inside your computer. Look inside your computer and see if the fans (particularly the biggest fan near the middle of the motherboard) is clogged with dust. If so, vacuum without touching anything!
2. Turn your computer on and go to the Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Event Viewer. Tell us if there are any Errors or Critical alerts in the Application or System error logs*.
3. Run memtest to test the RAM*
4. Run a diagnostics on your hard drive via your manufacturer's utility (typically you'll have messages in the error logs which will indicate if it is a bad hard drive)*
* = Ask if you need more detailed directions on these steps as I went over them very fast.

 

Actually it's gotten to the point it plays nothing it won't even start songs but with dvds it will play but the picture goes super fast and with no sound. I haven't had any pop ups no error messages or anything like that. Event viewer in Application there are errors and warnings and also in system. My computer I can't seem to find the memory diagnostic tool I looked it up online and it's not where it should be. How do I run a diagnostic on my hard drive it's a dell dimension 4600 I also looked that up and it said to push control alt del and all that does is restart my system.

 

To check the memory and hard drive you need to use Memtest and your hard drive manufacturer's testing utility. However I would really expect you to have been getting a lot of error messages for either of these to be the case. Since you aren't, I doubt you have memory or hard drive errors, so let's come back to this later.

Can you tell me though, is this problem that Every song fails to play, and Every DVD goes super fast without sound?

If so, I wonder if your media player (Windows Media Player) has simply been set to play media super fast. Here is the page on how to adjust this under Windows 7:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Change-playback-speed-in-Windows-Media-Player
In Microsoft's genius, they handly show you how to do this via a video (hilarious!) but if you scroll down further, you'll see a section marked 'To play content faster or slower than normal', just click on that to learn how to adjust the speed.

If you don't use Windows 7, let me know what version of Windows you use and I'll see if the same might still apply to you.

 

I have windows XP every dvd plays fast and with no sound but no just on windows media it also does it on nero and when I was burning movies with dvd shrink for my family the movie would play back with no sound and super fast.

 

I don't use nero or dvd shrink, but it's quite possible that it simply embeds a Windows Media Player pane, and changing the settings on Windows Media Player would effect that too. It could also be a codec issue. Try downloading a different media player and playing a movie or song on that.

Try Media Player Classic and let us know if you have the same problems.

 

I tried the classic and the same thing happened

 

Okay fair enough, thanks for trying Media Player Classic.

Do you have any other audio/video files you can test this one other than your DVDs (so we can eliminate your DVD player)? If you go to My Document, then My Music, there is a sample folder with some audio clips to play. You can also look for videos in the My Video folder too, but I don't believe there will be a sample folder there.

If you have the same problem there, then it can only think it's your codecs.

 

Well I went out yesterday after letting you know the classic was doing the same thing I left my computer on and now everything seems to be fine....I don't get it....