How to Troubleshoot Sound

So, the computer my nephews are using doesn't have sound. This is often something that is forgotten about on a reinstall of Windows. It is because Windows doesn't have a lot of the specialized sound drivers that are needed for the internal sound cards. It is...in my opinion...kind of annoying.

First....check your cables. Green cable from the speaker goes into the green jack in the back of the machine. Also, check THE entire back of the computer for other sound cards. Sometimes, you have two places to plug in the cable, and you are plugging them into the wrong one.

Next, check to make sure, in the lower right hand corner of your Windows, that your sound isn't simply muted. It looks like a speaker and if you click it you should be able to adjust the volume.

Next, go to Start, Control Panels, System, Hardware, Device Manager.



Click on Sound, Video and Game Controllers.

There should be stuff here. If not, check in Other Devices. Are there unknown items in Other Devices? If so, chances are one of them is your sound card.

So, you have to make it understand that it is not just an Other Device and is actually a sound card. How do you do that?

You get the driver. If you have an internet connection, you can go to the manufacturer and look up the model number. In my nephew's case, they do not have an internet connection so they'll have to do this on their Mom's computer and transfer the data using a USB memory stick.

So, in my nephew's case, the computer is a Dell Dimension 2400. (I think).

If I go to the http://www.dell.com/support and click on Drivers & Downloads, tell it what model you have and you'll see a page come up with your specific drivers. Not ever manufacturer is this good about finding their drivers.

Click on Audio. Look not for the Patches and Upgrades, but the Driver. Download it. In my nephew's case, copy it to the USB key to take it to the computer, or just run it to open the setup program for the audio driver. It should find it and install the driver, thus moving it from "Other Devices" in the Device Manager to Sound, Video and Game Controllers.

It may want to reboot. And that is how you fix sound on a Windows machine.

Something Technical about DSL

Okay okay. Something technical.

A question I get asked a lot is how to get high speed internet. I don't know every possible thing about high-speed internet as we have a fabulous LAN at work that I don't have to do much to make work. Someone else takes care of that.

And I know about my own high-speed internet at home because I set it up and I fix it when it breaks.

I can't really answer questions about someone else's network.

But...

I can tell people how it looks and how it works....

For example: DSL.

DSL works over your existing phone lines. Your existing phone lines use 2 of the four wires in your phone cable. (Sure, take out a phone cable and look at it. I'll wait.)

The other two aren't used unless you have a DSL converter in the jack. Then all 4 are in use; two for your phone and two for your internet. And they don't interfere with each other, usually.

The cable from the phone jack with the converter plugs into the DSL converter box (aka cable or dsl modem) and the network cable that comes out can be plugged into the network connector on the back of your computer.

Or...you can plug it into a wireless access point to allow you to use your laptop without any cables. Or...you can attach it to a router to allow you to have multiple computers connected.

And that's DSL.