Thinkpads Forum

How can I reduce or increase the speaker volume of my T43 by using the command line? Obviously, the keyboard knobs modify the volume independently from the 'sounds and audio devices properties' of the control panel.
Only the mute function seems to work for both methods. While the sound volume on the control panel is set to the maximum, the keyboard knobs currently only show two green bars - and this setting clearly controls the speaker volume.

Peter

NirCmd can do it. See here: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html

Thanks for your reply. I had already tested NirCmd. Unfortunately, NirCmd does not influence the volume settings of the Thinkpad which you can see onscreen (about 14 green bars), with the exception of mute/unmute. Therefore, e.g., if you have set the speaker volume to 3 bars using the keyboard knobs and you apply 'nircmd.exe changesysvolume 20000', the onscreen display will still show 3 bars! It looks like the keyboard control sits over the control panel loudness.
How can I modify the keyboard controlled speaker loudness with NirCmd or another command?

Currently, I've set the control panel loudness (on which NirCmd works) to the maximum and I then reduce or increase the actually desired speaker volume with the keyboard knobs.

Peter

You might want to update all of your drivers on that T43; the green bar indicators were changed quite a while ago.

It's certainly a good idea to update the drivers. But the installation of the newest Hotkey Features Integration driver version 3.4 did not change the basic behavior described above. The only difference to the old driver is that I now have a black and white slider with numbered levels instead of the green bars! Unfortunately, even the slider is not controlled by NirCmd.

Peter

The NirCmd commands work fine for me... Maybe it's because you're running XP?

Yes, still on XP. When you are running the NirCmd command and e.g. reduce the speaker volume, can you then see the slider moved to the left and the level adjusted like you had used the keyboard knob?
Under my configuration, the actual sound level is also decreased but without changing the slider position and values!

Peter

Yeah the slider appears. It just appears as the new value; no animating, and doesn't show the original value.

Further volume changes using either the knobs or using NirCmd again change the volume as expected.

That's definitely different from my observation: I only get the black and white onscreen slider when I use the 'nircmd.exe mutesysvolume 0/1' command. All other nircmd volume commands have no visible effect. For the moment, I can only think of XP.

Peter

That, or it's a Conexant vs SoundMax drivers thing.
Or, it could be that I'm running SRS HD Audio Labs, which appears as a seperate audio device to Windows.