X61: Drastically Reduced Volume

[ArtShapiro]

My wife complained last night that she could barely hear the sound on her X61 (Vista Ultimate) while watching some sort of video clip. I had recently done the usual round of Windows updates without incident (aside from three Office updates that consistently fail ... apparently not a rare happening according to a Google search.)

So I took the X61 and had a look at it. The sound has never been great, just like most Thinkpads, but the volume has at least been "reasonable" given the tiny speakers. Sure enough, any sounds were preposterously low, either from web sites or from various Windows sounds tested out of the Control Panel. If the room weren't quiet, they probably would be completely inaudible.

All the sliders were full up and the onscreen display gave the full value of 50. I deleted the audio driver and let a reboot rediscover and reinstall. This didn't affect the problem. I didn't see anything of particular interest in the event viewer, and really had nothing to indicate that the machine wasn't performing normally.

Does anyone have any speculations about this issue? I'm going to move her to Windows 7 relatively soon, as we both dislike Vista. Maybe that will fix the problem, maybe not. But I'm not sure how to diagnose the situation right now.

Art

[LegendaryKA8]

Interesting... the only possible fix I could think of is downloading the 'latest' driver from Lenovo Support and installing that. I think your wife's machine's update rounds might have installed a newer version of the audio driver that started messing with things(or an update that just messes with your current audio driver for some reason; I've had that one happen as well).

One of my major pet peeves about recent Windows OS's is the completely ludicrous updating that goes on, practically all the time. I understand that this helps some people, but when Microsoft rolls out driver updates that might cause conflicts(I've had to help several people this has happened to) it really gets old. I think that updates sould be strictly for security problems and other critical OS functions... not to 'autopatch' everything under the sun.

[ArtShapiro]

Interesting... the only possible fix I could think of is downloading the 'latest' driver from Lenovo Support and installing that.

Interesting idea. I discovered that headphones, while not deafening, are plenty loud. I'm wondering if she's somehow blown the speakers. But I'll try diddling the driver - thanks for the suggestion.

Art

[ArtShapiro]

Well Sacre Bleu!

I deleted the driver, which necessitated a reboot. Upon coming up, Vista searched for a new driver in the "preconfigured drivers folder", and out of task manager I couldn't figure out the specific task quickly enough to kill it.

Anyway, it completed, and then I ran the latest Sound Max stuff from the Lenovo drivers matrix page. As an aside, I don't comprehend the distinction between that and the audio drivers installed by Windows.

And now everything is working fine again - I've got nicely loud, crummy sound.

My wife will be happy. Thanks for the idea.

Art

[LegendaryKA8]

Not a prob. Is she running an x64 flavor of Vista? I ask this as I just recently put Ultimate x64 on mine and this is a pretty good heads up for me if I end up encountering this problem once I turn on the update function.

[ArtShapiro]

Regarding Vista: negative - just plain old 32. The machine came from Lenovo with Home Basic, which IMHO is a crime against humanity, and I upgraded it to Ultimate early this year.

I'll probably go with the 32 bit Win 7 as well; there doesn't appear to be any overwhelming advantage to 64 for her extremely modest demands on a computer.

I'm hoping it behaves a little smoother than Vista; I'm getting really concerned by the almost constant hard drive activity on the machine. As I type this, I'm watching the drive light on with few flickers off, with svchost, as usual, being the cryptic culprit.

Art