NP700Z5C audio problem--sound only comes out of speaker underneath the laptop

Bought a new NP700Z5C with Windows 8 installed. Seems like a very good machine, but - sound is only coming out of a speaker on the bottom of the laptop, which I think is a subwoofer. Nothing seems to be coming out of the main speaker above the keyboard. I looked to see if there were any new audio drivers to download but the Samsung site only seems to have drivers for Windows 7 and earlier.

Could someone with the same model confirm that under normal operation it's very obvious, by putting your ear to the main speaker, that sound is actually coming out of it?

Does anyone know of any settings that could control balance between the main speaker--speakers, actually, I guess there are two under that grill--and the subwoofer underneath the laptop?

Does anyone know anything about whether this is likely to be a driver problem and what the situation is with updated Windows 8 drivers?

Any other ideas about what this could be? I hope it's not a hardware problem, I really don't want to put this machine back in the mail after spending a day setting it up how I like it...

Thanks!

 

Well, as I spent several more hours installing software and configuring my setup, the laptop rebooted about a dozen times. And at some point, suddenly the main speakers started working. So it's either an intermittent hardware problem, or, hopefully, just a weird one-off thing while I messed with the OS.

 

Samsung's download site isn't up-to-date. We are now expected to use SW Update to provide newer software and drivers.

If you haven't run SW Update then perhaps Windows Update found a newer audio driver.

John