Help! My audio stopped working.

I recently connected my laptop to surround sound via S/PDIF, and it was working great until my game froze as I was playing and a buzzing noise came on. I had to restart my computer and now all of my audio devices are gone. Speakers are gone from the audio mixer and all of my recording devices are no longer there. The only items listed in device manager are : AMD High Definition Audio Device and Bluetooth Hands-Free Audio.

What the heck happened?

Edit - I downloaded the drivers from Dell support and it didn't help anything. Installed them and restarted and still no sign of sound.

 

You have great timing posting this haha. Look at a couple threads under you. You have a defective motherboard, in which some cases, the sound card disappears and after a couple hard reboots and /or switching the GPU brings back sound card.

 

Thanks a lot Technos! Those threads helped.

I got really lucky I guess and fixed it. All I did was shut down my computer, unplug it, hold the power switch for 20 seconds and then plug it back in. Now my soundcard reappeared and everything is as it was before. Weird. Glad it's fixed, though. Hope it doesn't happen again!

I re-installed the factory Creative drivers. Are there better drivers for the Recon3D card out there? Anything I can do to ensure this doesn't happen again? (besides replacing the motherboard). Thanks!

 

fluent, if you've got the same problem i have, it will happen again. All you'll have to do to fix it, is just turn off the computer and then turn it on again. Don't just reboot it, turn it off and on.
Pro tip: You'll be able to tell wheter the problem is going to show up right after to turn on your pc: if you see a red light coming out the S/P DIF jack (the one that's on the left of the microphone jack, on the left side of your computer), then the problem is there!

 

I do see a red light there, and it did happen again. I fixed it by just turning off and back on. Weird. I guess it's a little inconvenient, but it could be a lot worse.

Is it difficult to flash a new bios? Will that help at all?

 

I recently upgraded my bios from A11 to A12. The problem now seems to happen slightly less often, but it's still there. I won another problem with my keyboard though. I can't say it's due to the fact i upgraded my BIOS, it could just have been a coincidence. Luckly, all we have to do to solve the audio problem is just to turn off and on our pc.
I know it's a pain as we paid our laptops a LOT, but as you said, it could have been much worse.

 

Well, I was just playing my game and it crashed again, same as before with the weird buzzing sound. This time when I restarted, though, my audio was still working. I wonder if this is because I'm using the S/PDIF out? It never happened before, now since I've used that output it's happened twice. Weird.

 

I downgraded from A11 to A09. The problem was much less persistant on A09. I will test A10 and A12 later.

 

My game was constantly crashing with that buzzing sound. The audio works on restart and I disabled a debug setting in the game's .ini file, which seems to have kept it from crashing. This all started happening when I began using my S/PDIF out, so I'm sure that has something to do with it.

 

Flashing the BIOS should help, A09 seems to be the most stable one on this issue. If you guys still have warranty send us an e-mail to [email protected] and we'll help with the mobo replacement.

 

How much is the cost to us guys that are out of warranty? Can you guarantee a working board if we do pay for repairs?

 

Contact the AGS dept. They will be able to help you better with the OOW repair.

 

I was quoted 600 some for the repair...... I can renew my entire warranty for 250 for another year.