Dell Inspiron 6400 Left Speaker Not Working

When I turned on my laptop, I was surprised to find that my left speaker no longer works and my volume is more than 20x quieter (not an exaggeration, its quiet with 100% than it used to by on 5%). I have looked in control panel and everything is already on 100%. The only other thing I tried was system restore and it didnt work either.

I didnt upgrade the audio card so I have whatever SigmaTel integraded sound card it came with. Computer relatively new (less than 1 month). 1.6ghz, 2gig ram, 120gb harddrive and ati x1400. If you need an more info please ask, and thank you for your time/help.

 

have you tried reinstalling the intergrated sound card driver? It could be malfunctioning, causing the speaker to not work. See if that works.

 

i did, i called dell right after the post and did a bunch of stuff. can you give instructions to 'reinstall the intergrated sound card driver"?

The sound card is SigmaTel 9200. And to clarify, when i said "when I turned on my laptop", i actually meant after I turned it on from standby after about 3 hours of non-use there was no volume at all, then I restarted and there was volume in only right speaker

Here is 3 possible problems/causes.
1. I was attached to AC Power sometime earlier today, some technician guy took out the power for my room and the laptop shut down with it (the batteries were in with 100% charge, i dont know why they didnt kick in).
2. The laptop was closed, but it may have been possible small amounts of water go in while I was having lunch. The two vents next to the mute/stop button smell sort of weird (a hint of burning?) and also not sure if it always smelled like that.
3. I installed Express Dictate Professional Dictation Software from nch.com.au/express/index.html (sry if there is no linking). I changed the output and input source to sigmatel (originall default input/output) in that program. Later I uninstalled it via add/remove programs...dont think it had an effect but im no expert.

 

Sounds like a hardware problem. If you called Dell, I'm sure they would try reinstalling the audio driver: removing Sigmatel audio from the device manager (Control Panel ->System -> Hardware -> Device Manager), rebooting the system and re-installing it (the driver can be downloaded from dell website).

 

yeah, did it a couple of times. I did the diagnostics, says all audio drives passed

 

that leaves us with two possibilities... either you went deaf on one ear, or it's a hardware problem

 

Well Im not deaf in one ear, so its a hardware problem. Thanks for your help, Ill see what I can do with this thing.