T23 No Sound

[eric1234]

Hi All,

I have a IBM T23 Laptop that I bought used. When I first got it, it had sound, and could play CD's, but not DVD's.

Then, I did some of the system/driver upgrades from the web, and the sound stopped working.

This wasn't the biggest deal, since 99.9% of the time, the sound is muted, as I use it for notetaking in class.

Then, I decided I wanted (if possible) to get the sound back. I updated the bios/embedded controller, and it worked!

From there, I muted it again, and hadn't really paid attention to the sound. I've recently decided I want sound to play some instructional videos (Patent Bar prep), and notice that the sound doesn't work.

At one point, I also tried downloading a few free DVD player programs to get the DVD player to actually play. None of those succeeded, and each was subsequently uninstalled.

When I say no sound, I mean no sound at all: not when I hibernate, plug or unplug the power, or anything. The headphone jack also does not work.

I have confirmed that the volume is not muted, and also checked on the mixer volume control. The sound drivers are all up to date (according to the Lenovo site), and all of the easy things have been checked.

I know the speakers once worked.

One other tidbit, when going into and out of Hibernate, I can hear a sort of 'clicking' (?) from the speakers - not a tone, but a faint click.

I'm pretty sure that it's not a hardware (speaker) problem b/c the headphone jack is also DOA...

Any words of advice? Help would be greatly appreciated...

Thanks,
Eric

[BigWarpGuy]

Were you 'muting' or disabling the sound in bios or in Windows?

[eric1234]

I was muting by using windows, via the speaker icon in the taskbar, and selecting "mute"...

[BruisedQuasar]

Eric, visit the Thinkpad support site and download the most recent audio driver for your particular model Thinkpad.

When I got my like-new factory refurbished T-23, audio did not work at all. I surfed around in my directories and discovered there were no audio drivers in the Thinkpad audio folder. I don't think Windows can run the audio. You must have the IBM driver.

I'll bet your driver is corrupted, corrupting essential files on the hard drive & periodic development of registry malfunction are flukes Windows O/Ses are infamous for.

--Bruised

[eric1234]

Hi,

Thanks for the advice, but I had done that... to no avail...

In frustration last weekend, I started with a new install of Win2k, and it cleared it up.

The lenovo software installer (as posted via a link elsewhere on this forum) worked marvelously for getting all the drivers back into the cleansed machine...

thanks,
Eric

[BruisedQuasar]

Hi,
I had done that... to no avail...In frustration last weekend, I started with a new install of Win2k, and it cleared it up.
The lenovo software installer worked marvelously for getting all the drivers back into the cleansed machine...
Eric

Excellent decision! My philosophy is to always have a mirror backup. When a few tryists fail to fix a Windows problem, I refuse to waste time figuring it out. I just do a fresh reinstall. Does the trick every time.

Before XP, some of us routinely reformated and reinstalled Windows about every 60 days, except for Win 3.XX. We permanently uninstalled that turkey fast. My friends and I used GEOSWORKS instead. Small, fast, stable, cheap. Very well supported. Probably still use it if Gates had not used illegal methods to destroy the publisher, Berkeley Softworks.

My Linux machines, though not rebooted for a few years, never seem to need tweaking or reformating. No goofy registry problems. No mere program install problem bringing down the system. No registry problems. The newest Xandros Linux releases should be enough to convert many people tired of goofy Microsoft.