Windows 7: Dell XPS M1330 Speakers not working

Morning/evening!

Suddenly this morning the inbuilt speakers on my XPS M1330 Windows 7 installed(it came with vista) laptop stopped working

Problems
-Sound test in control panel gives 'Failed to play test tone'
-No sound in headphones/external speakers as well.

Have tried every damn thing:-
-re-installing sound driver from dell site (Drivers and Downloads) and (Drivers and Downloads)
-re-installing driver from dell resource cd.
-running install in compatibility mode, vista.
-BIOS Upgrade.
-Repair through windows cd.
-checking 'windows audio' services in the windows process

In the dell diagnostics test, I can hear sound in speaker as well as headphones.


And system restore doesn't have a recent restore point.

Please help help I don't want to do a format

Thanks

you have'nt pressed the mute button by any chance, have you?

on the taskbar, does the speaker icon have a red x on it ,or does it show 1,2 or 3 sound waves?

Thanks for the reply.

The speaker in the taskbar isn't muted and it does have waves when I have the device driver installed.

in hardware aand sound in the control panel , in the communications tab is "do nothing" checked this will stop other outside progs interfering and switching off the sound card , also check what the windows sound scheme is set at

checked this tooo....still not working

right, as a last resort, insert your win7 dvd , when it gets to the install page ,in the lower left click on "repair" you may have to do this 3 times, its worth a go instead of reformatting

I checked that too but not 3 times. How do it 3 times? After I click on repair there are 5 options but none which are worth.
restore,repair,memory repair,command and personal image backup.

are you letting it boot from the win 7 dvd? there is a post by capt jack sparrow that totally explains the reason for doing it 3 times ,i will try to find it for you

sorry cant find the post it may not have been by the capt (sorry capt)