Audio Driver for Dell Optiplex GX280  

I consulted a friend who was familiar with used computers such as mine. I tried his suggestion, and it worked.

The problem was that the sound was turned off in BIOS.

It was formerly a University computer, so a lot of the settings in BIOS had been changed around to avoid people tampering with the computer. I'm glad, because otherwise I would've had later problems upgrading RAM and using basically any of the ports besides USB. Dell has some quite impressive BIOS options. That can be good or bad, depending on whether or not you know what you're doing.

Thank you all for all your help! I have learned a lot!

Hey Guys,

I have followed this thread to the end and I was impressed with the kind of support and effort made by everyone until a solution was found. I have the same system as (DELL Optiplex GX280) with the same no sound problem at home. I am in the office now but will try your suggestions when In get home and I hope to resolve it with one of the suggestions made.

Thanks to all for the help! I too had the same problem with a dell gx280 and windows 7 pro - no audio. When I downloaded the driver from dell (as specified in a previous reply) it wouldn't install by running the exe. The error message returned was "The audio driver files do not support your computer hardware". However, they do support the hardware.
To install, first run the exe, this will unpack the drivers and attempt to update the system. If you get the error continue with the following steps.
Go into Device manager, right click on the Audio device and select properties.
Then select the driver tab and the "update driver" button.
Then "Browse my computer for driver software".
On the next screen, browse to or enter the directory the driver was unpacked into. This is normally "c:\dell". Make sure the "Include subfolders" checkbox is checked. Then click "Next".
The drivers should be installed.