Solved sound only works with headphones - no control over volume

Hi

I have a dell windows 8.1. Everything has been fine for a long time and now... no sound. I must admit to never really understanding how sound works on my laptop. After some fiddling around I managed to get some sound - but only when speakers are plugged into the headphone socket. Now my PC controls make no difference to the volume. I think the ss below suggests that I want the sound to go through the 'speakers headphones' but the sound level meter says its using the communications headphones.


This is what I have for my sound card.

The same happens when I stream audio - only works if headphones connected and no control over the column from pc.

Lastly, when I right click on the top one and click test it says 'failed to play test tone'

Can anyone help please?

Many thanks

E

The first thing I see is you do not have the correct sound driver. You only have the generic, basic function, Windows installed High Definition Audio Codec (Driver).

First step is to install the correct hardware sound driver. Not enough system spec's provided so I can't research what you need. If its a factory built PC, go to the PC vendor and download the Win 8.1 driver. If its custom built, go to the motherboard vendor for the driver.

Hi - and thanks for your reply. I went to the dell site and ran a tool that told me that there was a new driver. This I installed and hey presto - all is well.

Thanks for the pointer

Edward