Sound only present if using headphones.

[Pixie]

So, with headphones the sound works fine, without there is no sound.

It used to have sound regardless of headphones, what did I do wrong?

Thanks.

[jaclaz]

2 hours ago, Pixie said:

It used to ...

... and then what happened?

jaclaz

[Gansangriff]

What kind of computer do you have? A laptop? A desktop with in-built speakers? Where would the audio come out normally?

Have a look at the control panel under "Sounds and Audio devices" (might be translated differently). Maybe there are different pre-settings for your headphones and your normal audio output. Check if anything is muted accidently. Also try different applications. Maybe it's just a bad setting in the video / audio program that you are using. Do you have no sound at every program?

[Pixie]

I have a computer with built-in speakers. 

The sound used to work about five years ago, then I made some changes, I don't remember what I did, but the sound was gone, for all applications. I tried all simple fixes back then. I started working on my latop after that. But now I want to make a ppt with sound, and I want to give the file to somebody. Ppt is on this old computer. I want to make sure the sound works without headphones before I give the file away. So that's the long story ...

[Dave-H]

FWIW, I think if a PowerPoint presentation has sound when it's played through headphones, it would be extremely unlikely not to produce sound through speakers as well.
As for why your speakers aren't working, it could just be a hardware failure of course.
Put your ear right to the speakers when you boot up. Is there any sound at all during the boot process, even a short faint click or pop?
If not, it could well be hardware.

[Gansangriff]

If it's a hardware failure, you could also try and boot up another OS. I'd use a Puppy Linux Live CD. If there is no sound on startup ("woof woof"), the speakers are probably broken. Unless something is disabled in the BIOS settings... did you have a look there?

Did you work with Live CDs already? Feel free to ask.

[jaclaz]

If the thingy has not been used for some years, or it has been used or stored with the headphone plug inserted I wouldn't exclude oxidation in the headphone jack switch.

jaclaz

[MikeyV]

Years ago i had a similar problem with a desktop. I thought the sound card died until I noticed by accident that the headphones still worked. I did some digging in the settings for the card and found an option like "Mute speakers when headphones are plugged in". Unchecked, rebooted, still not working, checked it again, rebooted and it worked. A year or two after that I had the same problem but it was only fixed by removing the pci card, booting up/down, re-seating the sound card.

Still not sure if you have a laptop or desktop as i have seen both have speakers built into the monitor. Double check the cables if its a desktop. Make sure that extra audio cable from the monitor is plugged into the proper jack on the pc. Maybe you could try to boot up from a cd or usb to see if sound works and then you would know for sure if its a software error. Edited January 19, 2022 by MikeyV