T400s speaker problem

[rjkagan]

I am looking at a t400s running Win 7 with a speaker problem. Audio out of the headphone jack works fine, but the speaker gives a very soft, distorted sound. Anyone familiar with this problem? Loose wire? Motherboard issue? I don't have the computer in front of me and this is all the information I have.

[jayton4]

The very first thing I do in situations like this is to boot up a live Linux CD such as Ubuntu or Mint. You have to confirm whether or not it is a hardware issue or if it is a software problem (bad driver or conflicting software). If the sound is normal with Linux, then you know it is something wrong in Windows. If you get the same distortion, then it would point to bad speakers, loose wire, or motherboard.