T42 Suddenly no sound.

[fefrie]

I've had my t42 for a couple of months now and I've havent't done much of anything to the laptop.

This morning the laptop was fine. I left, it went into standby/ restore, and when I came home tonight turning it on, there is no sound.

The audio buttons are unmuted and the drivers all seem fine. I've plugged into the headphone jack and there's no sound there too.

I've tried window media player, youtube, different browsers, no sound.

I've tried system restore and there is nothing there too.

Is there something else I can try? This is really annoying......

[ajkula66]

Try booting a "live" Linux CD and see if you have audio there.

Mint works out of the box on any T4x for testing purposes:

http://www.linuxmint.com/edition.php?id=67

If you do get sound in Mint, there's a driver issue somewhere in Windows.

If you don't, the audio chip has gone haywire and you might be looking at the beginning of the SouthBridge failure.

Good luck.

[fefrie]

does this southbridge problem include the laptop 'hanging'. It's been feeling like it's been running slow for the last couple of days. The symptoms would be best described as web pages loading slow.

[ajkula66]

If it hangs at IBM splash screen, you might be onto something...

SouthBridge controls most of the functions on T4x units that one could think of...anything from sound and networks through keyboard and USB ports to HD recognition...nasty little bugger when it goes bad.

[fefrie]

It doesn't hang at splash screen. Runs just fine from there.

I just tested the microphone using the sound recorder. If I blow into the mic above the esc key, I can see that the sound registers. If I plug into the microphone line, the keyboard mic is disabled, but no input from the line in.

Testing continues and backing up everything off of the laptop.

This is highly annoying......

[ajkula66]

Just burn the Mint disk and boot from it...that will tell you whether it's hardware or software that's causing you grief...

[fefrie]

I'm in the process of burning the disc now. In the meantime I did an error check on the c drive and no errors. After that restart the sound is working again.

This is so frustrating.

Can this be an intermittent symptom which is indicative of failure?

[ggene]

Hi Fefrie - I am having exactly the same trouble with my T42 and have been fighting it for a week now. If you learn anything productive about this problem, please let me know, I will do the same. You're right, very frustrating !!!

[fefrie]

I ended up reinstalling the OS using the Factory Image.

I reinstalled the system then did all the Windows updates, then created a rescue recovery image. Now I can do a fresh install in less than an hour.

Since my reinstall, I've seem to have lost my WinDVD5 installation which I thought was part of the factory image.

Other than that, the sound seems to work fine.

My T42 is the one with 64mb graphics, which was the lowest of the t42s that have chip failures, so I found it hard to beleive that my chip was failing.

Thankfully, i'ts working now. No problems.