Dell Inspiron 1520 Laptop - Speakers have stopped working

[D1gger]

My wife has a Dell Inspiron 1520 that she uses as her full time computer. She has been using a USB headset and mike and Go-To-Meeting software as well as Skype for connecting to her clients and other communication needs. She occasionally has used the 3.5mm headphone jack and earbuds just to listen to music or a podcast.

Last week, the speakers on the laptop stopped working. The 3.5mm audio jack still works with the earbuds and the USB connected headphones and mike still work, but if neither are attached, she gets no sound from the speakers.

Windows 7 Home Premium x64 is the OS being used.

I have reconfigured the sound playback devices, checked the bios to see if there was an option to disable the speakers.

I also uninstalled and reinstalled the audio device driver.

No joy on the speakers.

My suspicion is that there is a hardware switch that deactivates/activates the speakers when the 3.5mm audio jack is plugged in or pulled out, and that this hardware switch is broken.

Any other ideas?

 

[corkyg]

. . . My suspicion is that there is a hardware switch that deactivates/activates the speakers when the 3.5mm audio jack is plugged in or pulled out, and that this hardware switch is broken.

I believe this is probably what has happened. When an external device with a stereo mini-jack is used, there is very often a small metal shunt which is pushed over and shorts out the internal speakers. That small piece of metal is like a spring, and when the external plug is removed, it should return to its original position. Could be it is stuck or has broken from repeated in and out use.

The 3.5mm connector is basically a TRS connector. Section 4 of this article explains.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS_connector#Modern_connectors