E6520 speakers in skype and volume control & brightness progress bars

I have only two issues about my new E6520:

1) I am usually using my laptop with headphones or speakers. And everything is being played with them. But when i use skype, the sound of the new message in the chat sounds through the laptop speakers. Other sounds played in this moment sound through the laptop speakers also. So, when i get a message, the sound switches for one second to the laptop speakers and than back to the line-out.

2) When i adjust the volume & brightness using the hardware keys of the laptop, the corresponding icons appear in the middle of the screen, as the should appear, but hey have no progress bars. Once i managed to get the progress bar for the volume control after reinstalling the audio device driver. But after that i had to reinstall Windows and now i have this problem again and the reinstalling the audio device drivers doesn`t help

Did anyone have such problems? Any clue how to fix that?
These are small, but a little bit annoying.

 

Have you tried (re-)setting the sound settings in Skype? I don't currently have this problem, but I used to have a similar problem on a different machine; Skype did not pick up any of my default audio settings, so every time I plugged in a different mic or headset, I'd have to reset the settings in the program itself.

 

Yes, now i figured it out. I chose the correct output for the call, but not for the message sounds. Now it`s ok.

But the progress bars - problem is, of course, still persistent.

 

If it's any consolation, I don't have the bars on screen (and am happy like that).

Do you find the sound too low from the speakers, and even from the audio port? I can't use the speakers, they're so bad, and I find USB works much better than the audio port when I need loud sounds...

 

I didn`t mean some bars, that should be all the time. I meant normally, in notebooks, if you change the volume using the special volume-keys on the keyboard, an icon appears on the screen with a volume bar, and disapears, sa soon as you stopped to press the volume keys. A get an icon, but no volume bar on it. The same for the brightness.

I find the volume of the speakers OK. You cant expect much from speakers which are few centimeters big. My audio port seems to be OK to.

But these parameters are subjective i think. It`s enough for me, but not enough for you.