Soundcard with low volume

My Father-in-Law brought by his Gateway M305CRV laptop with XP complaining it wouldn't talk to him anymore. Indeed, the volume is now so low you have to put your ear on the speaker to hear it at all. I've checked all the obvious speaker and source levels in the software, and even with everything turned up to 100% the volume can't be heard from even a few inches away. Analog headphones plugged in are also very low in volume, and they used to scream a few months ago. So I plugged in a set of USB headphones, which bypasses the internal soundcard and its drivers. And even the USB headphones are very low in volume. So it's not a soundcard or soundcard driver issue. This low level playback happens with every sound source, and even for the Windows boot-up sounds. I've also double-checked the Sigma Tel C-Major sound card drivers to be the latest issued, and have uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers with a shutdown and reboot between each try.

I've looked everywhere within XP for any other sound level limiter or overall volume control, but without any luck. The only other thing that's a little different is that he has AOL on this laptop. I can't find it, but are there any AOL processes running at the boot-up level which can be set to limit the playback volume to protect your hearing? I've checked within the boot setup screen, but don't see anything there on the soundcard or special volume limiting. Again, this computer still has low volume using a pair of USB headphones which have their own audio hardware and drivers.

Any other possibilities? Any place else to look?

 

I would go into the control panel and go to audio devices.
Then go to speaker settings in the first tab, and go to advanced.
Try using presets for say "desktop stereo speakers"
I have my speakers set on that and they work fine.

Right click the my computer icon and go into device manager. (Its in the hardware tab)
Go down to "sound, video and game controllers" and press the "+" button.
You should see about 6 different codecs and devices.
One of them should have a red " X" through it, signifying that something is wrong.
when you double click on the one which has an "x" next to it, it will say something like: device driver not found, code 02234 has stopped working.

Just try and get the newest drivers, and hopefully that helps fix the problem.

K-TRON

 

If you used USB headphones, they probably act as a sound card on their own, apart from the Sigmatel audio, using their own drivers.

With this in mind, I think it isn't a hardware problem, but a software one, since it is happening irregardless of which audio device you are using.

I'd try doing this: Double-click the speaker icon in your system tray (do not have your USB or regular headphones plugged in; let's work with your regular speakers). The Master Volume control should pop up. Click Options, then click "Advanced Controls" from the menu that pops up, which will put a checkbox next to it, and enable volume levels for multiple sources.

In addition to making sure the Master Volume is maxxed out, check that the "Wave" slider is also maxxed. Now try again --is the volume much higher?

 

Yup... Tried all of the above, but still no go. I've located and turned up every speaker level, sound level, and playback level within the control panel as well as the DVD, WAV, and Media players. Still, very low sound level of perhaps 40 or 50 dB down.

And yes, since the level is still low with the Logitech USB headphones, that rules out a hardware issue in the laptop's soundcard as well as the drivers for that soundcard itself.

It really feels like a digital audio stream issue or something at the core audio level within the OS itself that's truncating the top 8 bits of the audio resulting in a 48 dB attenuation on the analog playback.

This laptop has worked perfectly for the last several years, but suddenly all the desktop icons were missing, which I found in an desktop folder named AOL-unused icons, and the audio was attenuated by 40 or 50 decibels. I'm not sure both happened at the same time, but I really distrust AOL in general. Is there some sort of audio-level control that AOL can exercise within the core audio section of XP? Any other ideas of where to look?

 

Maybe it's time to make a backup (say, using Acronis TrueImage, Symantec Ghost, or another HDD cloning application) to an external USB drive or other large source (say, over network to an image on a desktop machine) and then do a clean install to see if it will help.

If it doesn't, having made a backup like this will allow you to restore to exactly where you left off, and you'll be no worse off than you were before.

As much as I loathe AOL, I've heard of no issue with AOL that causes sound problems.

 

The full backup is not a bad idea. I've got an extra USB HD floating around as well as Ghost. I'll see if my FIL can find the original setup-install discs, make a clone of the current HD, then try a new install and see what happens. That should tell me something....