Yesterday I was having no issues, as all normal sounds were present (i.e. Windows start-up/shut-down, as well as able to hear mp3 music played on Media Player). Then I accidently pressed the mute button and now I no longer hear sounds...advanced PC user ...tried everything. I can not hear any system sounds, nor manually force any sounds to be heard. When I look at the volume mixer, I can see the green bar rising and falling (when playing music) so it seems like the sound is being generated but just not being relayed to the internal speakers and/or headphone jacks. Likewise when I open the "Sound" window, my default device is the "Speakers and Headphones, IDT High Definition Audio CODEC", and it shows the same activity on the green verticle bars. I do not use any external speakers. I need the latest audio drivers for my chipset (AMD) I tried the ones on the HP support web-site and they didn't work. I uninstalled the old drivers and reinstalled using Device Manager and Software Maintenance ...nothing is helping.
The audio troubleshooter did not identify any issues. All drivers/etc appear to be running properly with no problems noted. I have not installed any new programs in the recent past (but I honestly don't know if some update occured without my knowledge).
Something similar to this happened to me a couple months ago. Sound randomly disappeared that time too, but came back just as randomly several days later. Now that it has happened again, I would like to not only fix it but determine the cause so it doesn't re-appear again and again in the future.
Any advise or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. And if there is any further information I should provide to give a better view of the situation, just let me know and I'll do my best. Thanks!