T40 - No sound via Speakers. Only through headphone. Help!

[SimonaB]

Hi All. Hope someone can help me? I actually work with quite a few Thinkpads T30's, T40's and T60's.
But anyway, I currently have a problem I just cannot fix.

I've reformatted the drive on my T40 and installed VISTA. Office, and other basic aps. I know that there was sound via the speakers before the rebuild. But suddenly it only seems to work through the headphones. And I have tried just about anything I can think of to try and fix it.

Any advice?

Thank you in advance.

[frankiepankie]

Try booting an linux liveCD (like Ubuntu, or Knoppix) to see if you can hear sounds/music.

If that works > Software issue with Vista
If that doesn't work (you can hear with headphone, but not with speakers) > Hardware problem.


Oh, and you can try the PC Doctor bootable CD, to check if the soundsystem passes the tests.

[sktn77a]

Check your volume control panel and make sure its not muted, master volume isn't low, and WAV isn't low. Generally, this will affect the headphome ouput also, but somethings not right. You may have a bad headphone jack (this usually mutes the internal speakers).

???????

[SimonaB]

Thanks for your quick replies!

sktn77a - no problem with the mute button or volume control on the machine itself. If I used the volume control buttons on the machine (with the headphones), they work as I'd expect them to.
Unplug the headphones and no sound.

However, what I have noticed is that I've lost my mixing panel as well.
On the bottom left hand side of the taskbar where the volume icon is, I used to get a mixing panel with various different options for volume control. I now only have the main function of increase of decrease volume.
I've checked sound drivers and it says the correct drivers are used and no newer version available.

frankiepankie - I've not tried something like a Linux liveCD, so I'll figure out how to do that (not done that before) and see if that works.

However, I have run pcDoctor on the laptop (not a disk) and it didn't pass the test for speakers.

I'm not on that laptop at the moment so can't give more precise error messages etc. but will try as suggested and see what I can do.

Any other advice or potential things to try would be great!

[zdriver]

If you take the time to download the pc doctor dos bootable diag image, make a disc, and boot from it - it will eliminate Vista as being the problem.
I'll bet it fails the speaker test and the real problem is mechanical with the headphone jack, either dirty or bent contact. When you insert the plug, all it does is move a metal arm away from making contact which cuts off the speakers, it is probably bent or fatigued or dirty from too many uses.
You can try spraying a bit of electrical contact cleaner, such as lps in the jack which might fix it if it is just a dirty connection.
Hard fix is trying to bend the arm back, relitivly easy is to replace the jack assembly with one from a scrap motherboard.
Requires dissassembly and soldering skill of course.