volume control permanently minimized

when i click on the little speaker icon, volume control appears in my taskbar as normal, but try as i may, i can't get it to "expand". nor can i kludge it w any combination of "restore", "[re-]minimize" or "move".

nor does the trick of minimizing everything else around it work. there is simply NO WAY to get it "open". "close", otoh, works just fine (no change when i reopen things, tho).

i've tried killing it off from the task manager (sndvol32.exe) in hopes of jarring something loose, but to no avail. ditto on reboots etc. every last time volume control boots just fine...but stays "minimized".

i'd be glad to uninstall/reinstall it if i knew how. but it seems to be part and parcel of windows (XP, btw), and nothing related shows up in the "add or remove programs" tool.

so what DO i do?

 

Click on the speaker icon. When the volume control appears, click on the speaker that appears above the slider. You then see the full set of volume controls.

 

huh? there's no slider, no additional speaker. like i said, just a minimized TAB in my taskbar.

in fact, i now have like *7* of them, from repeatedly clicking the speaker! but not a ONE is willing to maximize.

btw, if i RIGHT click on that first speaker, i get the same treatment from "open volume control". otoh, i CAN get "adjust audio properties" to pop up normally. anything in there to fix this? (i see troubleshoot for various HARDWARE in there, but nothing that looks like it would affect the volume control display itself)

btw, i had recently MUTED my speakers, so now i can't get sound out of the pc, no way, no how! any workaround here?!

 

Sorry, I'm using Windows 7 so the slider and speaker icon might be specific to my version of Windows. I'm stumped.

 

the popup box is the same one i get via the "open audio properties" option i mentioned before. and in either case, clicking on the "advanced" button just opens the usual MINIMIZED TAB in my taskbar....

btw, i shud note that there IS a slider and a mute option in that first popup, so i did in fact get basic sound back on (the aforementioned "workaround"). sound is pretty LOW, tho -- i suspect there are sub-sliders set to 20% or 30% among the invisible ones.

i think i really need to reinstall something. is it sndvol32 itself, or some display-related app which controls the taskbar? i'm not having these probs with anything else, afaict.

 

Hi I'm using XP3 Home. If I go into control panel and click sounds and audio, I get screen shot below. If I click advanced, I get the second screen shot. You can also tick to have icon appear in system try. If you double click the icon in system tray you will see second screen shot.

 

yeah, like i've said (few times now?), i get that FIRST popup (left screenshot) either via ctrl panel or via "adjust audio properties" above the speaker icon down by the clock (which, obviously, i have ticked). only diff is that mine is "SigmaTel Audio" where yours is "SoundMAX".

the SECOND screenshot, otoh, is the one i haven't seen in 2-3 days! i think mine is slightly different (7 or 8 sliders there), but, basically, same thing. and totally INVISIBLE lately.

when i ATTEMPT to open that (thru various means described), i only get as far as the corresponding tab in my taskbar. with "maximize" and "restore" either shaded out or simply unresponsive.

luckily, the slider and mute on the master control (leftmost slider in screenshot #2) is redundant to the one in audio properties (screenshot #1)...but as with your own sliders, wave or line in or something else is apparently set low, such that even with the master pinned, i'm getting very little output.

 

Try:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/319095

 

Hi Tim and thefool!! I'm not having sound troubles, but I book marked your suggestions. Real nice guys. Thanks!! What a easy fix. Is Uncle Bill starting to listen to us??:-D:-D Old oneeyejack checked Thanks on both your posts!!

 

no, I am the fool, for 2-3 mins of googling just brought me the following:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...-windows-back-to-your-desktop-keyboard-trick/

i don't have a secondary monitor, but this did the trick!!

those MS fixes are a bit diff...for the situation where you don't even have the speaker icon showing in the lower right or the volume control doesn't get as far as appearing in the taskbar in the first place. likewise several "fixes" elsewhere involving registry tweakery.

for my problem, however, that "move" kludge was the answer.

 

Awesome that you got it working. And quite awesome you posted YOUR fix. Thanks for stopping by, with your answer!

 

Perhaps it was moved to a location that was not seen. No idea.

 

yes, XP apparently thought i wanted my volume control displayed somewhere out by the garage.

dunno how that happened (some crash or other), but that's indeed what it was.

Tim: i didn't have any real "sound" issues, per se, other than not being able to access the VOLUME controls.

 

Hi!! I'm not getting all this!! If I right click something in my tray I see Restore, Minimize and close. The rest are grayed out. What did you do exactly to fix your problem?? Thank youconfused
I understand that you weren't having trouble with your sound, just couldn't adjust it; is that right.
I'm trying to learn new things. This is definitely new.

 

Hi I think I figured it out. Thank you. Very interesting. :zzz

 

Hi They always say a picture is worth a thousand words!!
I think this is what you had or maybe worse. You were able to move it and then see the whole thing???????????:confused

 

sigh. for the last time, i had *NONE* of that. zip, zero, zilch, nada.

what i had was the little TAB in the taskbar indicating it was supposedly "open" (somewhere).

and what i did to fix it was as described in that "howtogeek" link i posted.

clear?

 

I understand you perfectly. No need to be hostile. I could have posted a screen shot with the entire Volume Control missing, just as your describing, but then it would have been blank and proved nothing. Members on Major Geeks speed their time freely to help other members with problems. I learned from your thread as I'm sure others did also. Yes sir your very clear and I'm sorry. I repeat I know exactly what you did. I was hoping to make it clearer for others. You will see in my screen shots that Volume Control is missing completely. I was able to find it with the up and down arrows and then able to restore it. You can barely see it in the lower right hand corner. The first shot shows it's not there period. Look close. It's blank under the top Volume Control. I have taken it out of the window. When I clicked my mouse it wound up in the left hand corner barely visible. I do not know how to make this any clearer.

 

I wasn't being "hostile", but it just seemed to me that you were ignoring every last thing I said. For several rounds now.

Anyway, glad you're finally up to speed!

Thanks for your interest.

 

No problem friend!! I wasn't explaining it very well. It's a good tip. Thank you!!
Some times what we type doesn't always come out like we meant it to. Sorry for the hostile bit. I wonder how that got hidden like that. That's weird! Computers are weird:-D