Volume adjuster disappeared?

[susiestar]

I have always had a little icon over on the right hand of the screen at the bottom that controls the sound on the computer.

Some routine updates installed and now I don't have it anymore.

I went to the taskbar and notification part of the control panel and tried to add it back on. I do not even have that as an option. It says power, date/time, and then the sound is shown but in that faded color that says it isn't an option. NOTHING I have changed so far will let me fix it.

Any ideas?

 

[witzend]

Go to start and click on "Control Panel". Then click on "sound". You should be able to click something that is "startup" that will put it back into your toolbar. Or, you can just click and drag the sound icon to your toolbar.

 

[Lothlorien]

I had that recently when I installed the service pak for vista last week. Do what witz said....you probably need to reinstall the sound driver.

 

[Star*]

Well I have a few ideas - if the ones up there didn't work.

Sometimes automatic service updates do not help - and mess up your sound configurations. FUN huh?

You can try these things and see if it helps. I am guessing that you are running Windows XP either home or business edition and have SP I or II. There really isn't any need for you to have SP III at this point unless you are some Super Geeky kid...SP is Service Pack. It's not totally stable just yet. I mean you can have it and it's not going to hurt you - but it's not necessary to run most programs.

If you don't know which one you have - you can go to START - RUN and type in winver - and it will tell you (yeah I know everyone go and try it) lol. If it says SP I - you may want to update to Service pack II so that things like Adobe can update & work today with your computer - keep in mind the outside world is updating constantly and just because you are only playing majhong doesn't mean you don't need to keep up with technology.

Okay - so if you are good to go - great.

Now...here are my two suggestions -

Start
Control panel
Properties
Performance & Maintenance
System
Hardware
Device Manager tab
Look for the Sound, Video Game content & double click
- Do you see any YELLOW question marks?
.....IF SO - there is a problem and you should be able to follow the prompts to trouble shoot.
..........IF NOT - you can click on the individual sound devices and follow the troubleshoot prompts to see if this corrects any of your problems.

IF NOT - here's another suggestion.

Not the best - BUT......

Start
Control
Performance & Maintenance
Then on the left side of your screen there will be a SYSTEM restore -
Click that -
It opens a page that will ask you if you want to CREATE a restore point or
actually DO a SYSTEM RESTORE.

Your computer "should' already be set to do a daily system restore. If/When you click on system restore ---
Make sure all OTHER programs are closed - ie: IE, WORD - any windows programs - (basically everything)
A calendar will pop up. Click the day closest to the day you KNOW you had sound...and restore to that point. ei: if you had sound YESTERDAY - restore to yesterday.

If your computer tells you you have no restore points...I'm not sure what you could do at that point except find the driver for your audio card and uninstall /reinstall it.

There is also a VERY nasty NASTY dll. (registry virus) going around so be sure that once you are done doing this - you go back and check that your firewalls and your internet virus are all up and working and on - This virus is called something like dll.32 - when you try to take it out? It replicates itself over and over and over - awful little thing.

Hope this helps -
If not - post again and let us know and we'll get some more ideas..

 

[susiestar]

I am getting ready to try these.

Star, I am running Vista home premium because it came with the computer.

It was in the last set of updates that it disappeared. Thanks, Loth, for letting me know it wasn't my imagination!

I will let you know if I manage to fix it!

 

[rlsnights]

Try a little camel milk. Might help - who knows? Bet it shines the screen up nice and bright.

 

[donna723]

I might try some of that too! I still have the little icon but I have no sound at all. Of course, mine is five years old and has had serious work done on it twice in the last few months. My son-in-law cleaned it up for me and added more memory and several updates, didn't notice that the sound was gone until I got it home and plugged it in. Then it got a nasty virus and the repair guy had to dump everything and reload it all from recovery disks, then spend a whole day doing all the updates. I think I have Windows XP Version 8 now. Sure would be nice to have my sound back!

 

[susiestar]

I am still having problems, but I found the volume mixer on the control panel and I just use it. It sure isn't as convenient. If the next update doesn't fix it then I will worry about it again. Too much other stuff right now.