VGNT350P not recognizing own speakers

My VGN-T350P seems to not recognize the internal speakers and does not seem to recognize the volume up/down buttons. The mute button turns on the green light but no mute message appears on the screen.

When I go in to try to adjust the volume through the control panel the speakers are not highlighted so I can not adjust the volume.

When I try to play music through the Windows Media Player it says there is a problem with the sound device. "There might not be a sound device installed on the computer." is what is the error message.

I already did everything Sony says on their website.
- uninstalled and installed drivers for media control device.
- went into bios.
- etc.

They informed me to take it in.

My friend, who is computer engineer, looked at it last night and believes it is a driver problem and not hardware.

He said some firms have hidden drivers that only selected people have access, e.g. HP. He found this out the hardway.

Thank you for your help in advance.

 

I have a similar problem. Bought my VGN-T350P on ebay couple of months ago, when arrived - mute LED was on and there is no way to turn if off other than remove battery. (I'm still in process of returning it to the seller after I get my money back)

Windows says "No Audio Device" and the whole system behaves strange. After I boot to Windows - it needs at least 15 minutes for the START button to work.
I tried everything (linux, reinstall, replaced sound card). After months of tries I finally managed to get some sound but there is definitely something wrong in there (probably motherboard or firmware).

In order to get my sound somehow working here is my workaround:

-First I lowered Speakers Volume to 4 in BIOS.
-Then after Windows starts - I open IE and navigate to any website which at -first takes forever (as I mentioned system is almost unresponsive after reboot)
-After about 45 minutes I close IE

Don't ask me why but after above procedure I've got Sound MAX Audio device instead of "No Audio Device" and my sound is working - although I get some artifacts on video playback.

I'm a software engineer and I've been dealing with lots of hardware/sofware problems in my life. The only explanation that comes to my mind is that I have a hardware failure (motherboard) or BIOS/firmware bug/corruption.

Anyway - my volume control buttons do not function even if I get the sound card to show in the system. Mute button works but does not turn off (it is amber all the time). Then - I just hibernate laptop instead of switching it off - and I have sound working everytime.

I'll try to do full system reinstall including repartitioning of the drive one more time and I'll post the results here.

Good luck with your laptop.

By the way - if you have a chance try to install external sound card and see if it works (ex. PCMCIA). I tried that and the system was reacting the same way. Control Panel -> Sounds was saying "No Audio Device". But when I rebooted it again and let it sit for an hour - I got my SB Audigy as an audio device there.