No Sound From Headphones

A few days ago, for no apparent reason, I stopped getting sound from my headphones plugged in to the headphone jack on my HP Pavilion dv7. I've had issues before where sound would stop working all together but re-installing the audio driver would fix it.

Sound still comes out of the built-in speakers, but when I plug in headphones no sound comes from either. I've tried re-installing the driver from HP and that didn't help, also tried installing the Windows driver but that didn't help either.

If I enable the communication headphones in my sound options, I get very, very low sound from my headphones accompanied with crackling from my built-in speakers.

Never have I encountered an issue like this before... I was thinking it might be a hardware issue, but I've ruled that out being as everything works just fine on Ubuntu.

Any help would be appreciated here. Thanks!

M W said:

A few days ago, for no apparent reason, I stopped getting sound from my headphones plugged in to the headphone jack on my HP Pavilion dv7. I've had issues before where sound would stop working all together but re-installing the audio driver would fix it.

Sound still comes out of the built-in speakers, but when I plug in headphones no sound comes from either. I've tried re-installing the driver from HP and that didn't help, also tried installing the Windows driver but that didn't help either.

If I enable the communication headphones in my sound options, I get very, very low sound from my headphones accompanied with crackling from my built-in speakers.

Never have I encountered an issue like this before... I was thinking it might be a hardware issue, but I've ruled that out being as everything works just fine on Ubuntu.
less the Ubuntu you're referring to is dual booted on the same machine.
Any help would be appreciated here. Thanks!

Unfortunately either the audio port in the computer is going bad or one of it's connections has come loose. Another thought just came to mind, is the audio port a single shared port for headphone and mic? If so that may be your problem.

ringel05 said:

Unfortunately either the audio port in the computer is going bad or one of it's connections has come loose. Another thought just came to mind, is the audio port a single shared port for headphone and mic? If so that may be your problem.

No, it's nothing like that, since it works just fine on Ubuntu. It's not a shared port, there is a separate port for headphone output and microphone input.

Sound has worked perfectly fine in the years past. I did a clean install of Windows 7 earlier this year and that's when I started having to re-install the audio driver every now and then, but this is the first time I've had this much trouble with it.

M W said:

No, it's nothing like that, since it works just fine on Ubuntu. It's not a shared port, there is a separate port for headphone output and microphone input.

Sound has worked perfectly fine in the years past. I did a clean install of Windows 7 earlier this year and that's when I started having to re-install the audio driver every now and then, but this is the first time I've had this much trouble with it.

Okay, been doing some checking, you're not alone with this issue. Apparently there is a problem with some Realtek drivers and some manufacturer's systems on Windows 7 which means you may have to set the headphones as the default and not the speakers. You need to set the default in Playback not Communications. The only other option is to plug the headphones into the speakers directly if they have an audio port (with the speakers as default), I know that works on mine.

ringel05 said:

Okay, been doing some checking, you're not alone with this issue. Apparently there is a problem with some Realtek drivers and some manufacturer's systems on Windows 7 which means you may have to set the headphones as the default and not the speakers. You need to set the default in Playback not Communications. The only other option is to plug the headphones into the speakers directly if they have an audio port (with the speakers as default), I know that works on mine.

The drivers that HP provides is listed as "IDT High-Definition (HD) Audio". I've tried changing the default devices but it hasn't helped. The speakers are built-in laptop speakers so the only audio out port is the headphone jack.