XPS m1330 No Audio Device is Installed

Hi Guys,

I have a frusturating problem. I restarted my m1330 this morning, and the audio stopped working for some bizzare reason. Prior to the restart, everything was fine, and once the system restarted, a red X appears next to the volume icon in the Taskbar in Vista Ultimate. I uninstalled the sigmatel drivers, restarted the system (at which point windows installed default drivers) -- still nothing. I then proceeded to download and reinstall the most recent drivers from Dell, and still nothing. The sound device appears to "working normally" in device manager, and in sound properties, but I don't get any sound.

The volume is not muted. Any ideas as to what could be causing this?

From reading around the net, seems like it was a common problem when users upgraded to Vista, but the reinstallation of drivers doesn't seem to work for me.

 

By the way, headphones, when connected don't work either. Hence, it leads me to think that this is a software issue and not a hardware issue.

 

It's probably a software issue. I had a problem like this when I first got my M1330.

I've forgotten how to go into it, but there's a diagnostic system that you can access whilst the computer is booting up, you can test that to see if your speakers are working. And if they're working in that, you may have to reinstall Vista and get yourself the latest drivers for the motherboard.

 

Tabris,

Thanks for the advice. Dell Diagnostics verifies that the speakers are indeed working. I definetly know its something to do with Vista. But what could it be? Reinstalling Vista is currenlty not an option since I am away from home and dont have access to my reinstall disks. I will be away in a few different countries over the course of the next week and it would be great to have audio on my laptop. What else could be conflicting for this issue to rise up all of a sudden? I haven't really installed/uninstalled anything recently.

Thanks!

 

This is really annoying. I just tried system restore, and tried to restore my laptop back to before when this problem existed. Although the restore was successful, the problem has not yet been resolved. Any suggestions would be highly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

Would installing Realtek drivers instead of Sigmatel drivers possibly fix this?

 

Ok Realtek didnt work. Could this be virus related?

 

Okay wasn't virus related. Finished a thorough virus and spyware scan of my system last night to no avail.

Any other means of fixing this?