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Sounds and Audio Devices Control Panel - Device Volume & Speaker Settings grayed out
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Anonymous
Created system restore point, then installed audio & video drivers from Microsoft Update. Lost audio & screwed up video, speaker icon in system tray disappeared. Tried to go back to the restore point, but system said that there was a problem and it could not restore my system to the restore point and no action was taken. Went to Creative & Nvidia and got latest drivers and installed OK. Device Manager shows no problems. Opened "Sound and Audio Devices Properties" control panel. On Volume tab, the "Device Volume" & " Speaker Settings" areas are greyed out. "Audio" & "Voice" tabs, have SB X-Fi Audio selections as default devices. "Hardware" tab has all devices enabled and working properly. Since sound loss was systemic, I checked BIOS and it had sound disabled, so I enabled it, but suspect this is for intergated motherboard sound. Checked Windows Audio Service, restarted it and made sure it starts automatically on windows startup. Restored sndvol32.exe from WinXP installation disk.
Nothing has been able to restore any sound to my system. Any other ideas?
System details:
Dell XPS 400, WinXP Pro SP3, Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Extreme Music sound card
Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Devices and drivers
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5 answers
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Anonymous
2010-08-29T10:52:58+00:00 -
Anonymous
2010-08-30T21:41:37+00:00 It seems to be a systemic problem.
All sound/music apps seem to run fine and no diagnostic detects anything wrong. It looks like Windows has been told that I have no sound capability at all. Hence, the device volume is set low and speaker icon disabled and speaker settings disabled.
Seems like getting these system settings enabled might be the key to geting the sound back.
Also, went to Creative and got the latest drivers, etc. from them. That didn't help either.
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Anonymous
2010-08-29T14:12:15+00:00 just wondering if it has something to do with your sound scheme, it may be not selected.
try control panel >> Sounds, Speech, and Audio Devices >> Sounds and Audio Devices >> Sound tab, then Sound Scheme.
I hope that helps.
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Anonymous
2010-08-30T21:33:01+00:00 Sound scheme is set to "Windows Default"
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Anonymous
2010-08-30T21:31:16+00:00 Went to Dell got drivers and loaded, but Sound Panel, Volume tab still grayed out. Nothing is selectable. The grayed out part for Device volume, shows it at lowest setting and the show speaker icon in system tray is unchecked.