Powerbook gone mute - please help!

K

katepehe

Registered
Hi, my G4 powerbook running OS X 10.3.8 hase gone unexplainably quiet. I-tunes plays with no sound and I just tried a dvd which played again no sound. The mute is not off and looking in system prefs for sound I can't for the life of me see why it has no audio at all.

Last time I remember hearing it play was a week ago playing itunes right before I plugged the laptop into a stereo and it played through the external speakers. I plugged the stereo in through the headphones port.

Would so appreciate some enlightenment!:)
 
Hi katepehe and welcome to the forum.
I suppose you pressed the F5 key several times and yet there is no sound. How is the volume when you use headphones? The same as your speakers? When you enter to Sound in the System Preferences (option + F5) do you have several output devices or just one?
 
Thanks for answering! I don't have any headphones or speakers here at the moment to test that - have been looking for some. But in system prefs I only have one output device listed and it is headphones... built in audio. It is so wierd!
 
shouldn't there be "internal speakers" in the list of sound output devices? At least this is the case for my powerbook. Try to get some headphones to test. Maybe something is wrong with your internal speakers..
 
I had the same problem about a month or so ago on my powerbook 17. I unplugged it at the office where it'd been working, took it home, tried playing some music, and nothing.

Turned out that it would play through external speakers or headphones, but not through the onboard speakers.

I rebooted, repaired permissions, and checked a few other things. nothing.
then I called AppleCare and they had me do fsck and the such. nothing they had me do worked.

So they had pkging sent to me so I could send it in for repair (along with a lcd that had bright spots since day 1, but that's a different issue). between the time I got off the phone with them, and a day later when the pkging came arrived, the speakers unixplicably (I know I butchered that word) began working again. still, I sent it in and they fixed the screen, and supposedly checked the speakers issue as well. I had it back in 2 days.

I've had no speaker problems since. so either they fixed whatever the issue was, or it was a completely freak occurance - though from your experience, it sounds like it's at least common in 2 pbs...

if you've got AppleCare. call them. they should take it in and fix for you.
sorry I can't offer anything other than moral support here, but they apparently fixed the issue for me.
 
Well I plugged it into a stereo and it played so mid song I pulled the plug out of headphone sockets and guess what, the laptop switched and continued the song itself - problem solved. No idea why or how but very glad it's working!

maybe it got confused?

17" too by the way.

Thanks for your support!
 
I think it has to do with the contacts in the headphone socket. I think it might have been stuck before, hence the Powerbook thought that there were headphones attached. Plugging in something into the socket probably dislodged the connecter and made things better.
 
Viro said:
I think it has to do with the contacts in the headphone socket. I think it might have been stuck before, hence the Powerbook thought that there were headphones attached. Plugging in something into the socket probably dislodged the connecter and made things better.
Click to expand...
Yup, would guess the same thing.
So, you should keep the headpart of a jack connector in your bag just in case it's confused again. ;)
 
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