My taskbar icon shows —– "Volume: 100 " and "Speakers and Dual Headphones IDT High Definition Audio CODEC"
There is what appears to be a mute icon above the keyboard and to the left of what seems to be a white volume control slider–it stays orange and when I tap it the taskbar icon changes back and forth with each tap to show no sound ( a little red circle with a slash through it ).
In ControlPanel\Sound the sound scheme shows as Windows default.
Under "Playback\Speakers and Dual Headphones is shown with a green checkmark and working
"Play Windows Startup sound " is checked, but there is no sound at shutdown or startup.
Operating system is 64 bit Vista Home Premium.
I have looked at Device Manager and have no issues other than the Synaptics touchpad being shown as non-op ( I have it turned off because I use a USB mouse )
Windows Update is on recommended setting of Update Automatically
I did have sound but apparently may have touched something somewhere that I'm not familiar with ? — this computer was given to me and I don't have a user manual for it .
I run this computer plugged in 99% of the time and the power plan is shown as "balanced".
Please advise what I may inadvertently have done to lose sound and how to get it back — I seem to recall that orange icon having been blue but rebooting hasn't helped.
There are a couple of possibility's, so I will start with the most obvious one, but from what you have done I imagine you have already tried this, but the icon you mention with a red circle with a line through it denotes the sound has been muted, to unmute the sound, click on the icon, the volume slider then appears, then click on the mute icon at the bottom of the slider then it should clear that, if that's the cause then this is the cure.
The other possible thing that comes to mind is the sound has been changed to play through a different device, but I've only seen it a few times, the best\easiest way to check all is set up correctly is to uninstall the sound, then reinstall, this should set all the correct settings\configurations to get it working again, if this doesn't work then we will need to look deeper, but for now, go into the device manager, expand the sound section by click the + next to it, then go down one at a time and on all sound entries simply right click on them, then select uninstall, reject any reboot options at this stage should they come up, then repeat for each sound entry until all are gone.
It is worth noting that not all entries may have an uninstall option, if you come across this that's fine, leave it and move onto the next one, once finished you can reboot, then let the system auto install the sound, as it will pick it up as a new device at boot, once done everything should be back to normal, so see if this helps at all.
On a side-note, if your using the mains that much, then it is highly advised to remove the battery (assuming yours can be without removing the mains as well), running the system that way will make the battery degrade much faster than normal, it is extremely practise to fully flatten the battery and full recharge it say once a month to keep it healthy, otherwise should you ever need to use the battery at some point you may find it's life a lot shorter than it should be, and that is caused by being plugged into the mains the way you are currently, just thought it worth a mention incase you were not aware of this.
