I need help with my dell inspiron 700m

I have a dell 700m which no longer plays sound out of the speakers. I took it to a computer guy and he "fixed" it but then a week later the sound stopped working again. He said my only option was to buy a new motherboard because the sound card is attached to the motherboard and there is no other way to replace the sound card. Is this really my only option? Any advice??

 

Ah.. I've read about this problem before. Since the 700m's speakers are at the bottom of the screen bezel, the speaker wire runs down along the hinge onto the motherboard - and I remember reading others' posts on how the speaker wire wears out and breaks over time (due to opening/closing the screen).

I did a quick google search for "dell inspiron 700m speaker wire" and found this link:
http://www.lukemiller.org/journal/2006/06/broken-speaker-wires-on-dell-700m.html

I don't know if this is your problem, but it's worth checking

 

Does headphone jack work? If so Faruk might be onto something if does not goes back to soundcard. I do have a question. Why you are questioning the professional advice you received? It could be correct.

 

The 'computer guy' might be right about that problem. Check out the Dell Forum if anyone there has had a similar experience with that notebook.

Changing the whole motherboard just to get sound out of the notebook speakers is not sensible. If not fixed, you would be better off getting an external USB sound card, and connect external speakers or headphones to it.

 

Us professionals are not always right. One of my co-workers once sold a new computer to a customer that had a "dead" computer. After the sale, we discovered it was a bad floppy cable that had caused the extremely bizarre problems the computer was having. In his defense, she was definitely ready for a new computer anyway.

Are we usually right though? Yeah, and people still never want to listen


I would go with Faruk and powerpack's suggestions first.

 

Hep I know you and your co-worker called the lady up and had a big laugh. She thanked you guys and acknowledged that yes, in fact she was ready for a new computer? And further thanked you guys for being the impetuous.

If this is not correct I don't want to know as I would like a good guilt free sleep tonight.

 

I actually don't know what happened, it was before I worked in this job (I've only had this tech position for a few months, before I did IT support for a high school). I suspect they told her as I work in a pretty honest store. It's my understanding though that it was something like a P2/64mb of ram in an Athlon 64 era though.

 

The head phone jack does work. It must be the wires then....

 

Hey it's good to know that the problem's been isolated - Let us know if you end up fixing it!

powerpak: That was a good idea to check the headphone jack!