System tray volume problem

[Kraai]

Hi everyone

I have a tough problem, and it seems that I can not resolve this one at all.

The speaker icon that is situated near the clock on the task bar, disappeared from there. It is only gone from the task bar, and I can do what ever I want to get it back there, no luck. On top of that, since it is gone from there, it seems that the volume is muted somewhere, as I cannot hear any sound when watching you tube videos or other online sound, but when I listen to Cd's or play mp3 files saved on the hard drive, the sound is there. The speaker icon shows "muted" when I look at it by right clicking on the task bar, and choose the "customize notification" option, and then scroll down to "Volume"

This is what I have done so far:

1. Un hide inactive icons
2. From control panel un mute the volume
3. From control panel show icon in taskbar
4. copied sndrec32 and sndvol32 from a working system and pasted it into the system32 folder replacing the existing ones.
5. Updated all drivers and made sure no conflict on drivers.
6. Checked on sound card software that nothing is muted.
7. Checked the online media like you tube that nothing there was muted.
8. run regedit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE>software>microsoft>windows>current version>run to see if there were some no tray icon problems there, nothing found.
9. Logged in and out of the account.
10. stopped and started explorer.exe

It seems that my problem is with the muted state of the volume icon found by right clicking the task bar, and then choose the "customize notification" option, and then scroll down to "Volume" Once there, right next to the volume icon it states [muted]

Strange thing is that I can hear sound when playing music from my hard drive and cd player.

This is for a Amilo pro Fuji Siemens laptop, operating on Windows xp pro SP2

Please tell me what am I missing here and any Idea how to fix this?

[Kapitaen M]

Curious: have you tried removing all drivers, then rebooting? I keep thinking this has to do with Windows behaving funny specifically when trying to communicate with the sound device, yet....

This could have something to do with your media player, because VLC, for example sometimes manipulates my WAVE output if I adjust the internal program volume, even after the application is closed.

Lastly, I would consider a different set of 'sndrec32' and 'sndvol32' to copy. I also was hoping you could run an application, just to see if sound is audible in something like a game or other app? That may help determine the source of the problem. Maybe even grab a different media player, and play songs or movies, just to see what happens.

I wish you best of luck in the meanwhile, that's a truly irritating situation you got.

[Kraai]

Hi

No, I haven't tried removing all drivers yet!

The media player is Winamp version 9, and it plays sound without a problem, as said, playing cd from cd rom, or mp3 from hard drive, the sound is there.

Using a build in radio player on a tool bar to listen to online radio stations, I can hear sound, no problem.

Playing a game from my pc hard drive, I can hear sound, no problem.

Playing a game online, no sound

Watching a you tube video online, no sound.

It seems that my sound is only gone when I try to access sound thru my browsers, FF or IE.

More suggestions if possible?

[Kapitaen M]

Did a little bit of searching, check this:
http://en.kioskea.net/forum/affich-19119-no-sound-from-web-browser

Appears this issue isn't uncommon, and the original poster shares your symptoms.

In another forum: http://forums.techguy.org/web-email/482976-no-sound-browser-2.html,
and this final post might aid you:

"I had the same problem and carrying out the above will problaly resolve it. BAsically when windows does a fresh install and does not find a sound card, the default microsoft codecs are not installed. When you install the sound card drivers, most sound card drivers are clever enough to install the default Microsoft codecs for you, but some do not (like mine, it usually the "smaller" manufacturers that cut back on this - never had problem with creative sound cards!).
Anyways, you can check the codecs installed by going to control panel, sound and audio controllers, going to hardware tab, clicking the audio codecs entry and selecting properties. before you run the above fix, you will find 2-3 entries in there.

1. control panel, add hardware, next, YES hardware connected, goto bottom of list for add a new hardware device.
2. Install hardware manually (Advanced), select sound, video and game controllers, have disk and point to "C:\windows\system32" and file mmdriver.inf.
3. Select a codec to install, you maybe asked for windows xp disk.
4. repeat until all codecs are installed.

do not install the (MCI) ones as they are legacy."

I am noting that Windows Media Player is continuing to resurface with every couple of forums I visit that try to discuss the issue... check the WMP volume controls? :)

[Kraai]

Hi

There is sound on WMP, so no problem there with any volume.

I tried all of the codec installations, still it dit not help at all.
I even went and update WMP to 11, in the hope it will find the fault, but still even that did not help.

I reckon a simple problem like this may ask for a re- install of xp to solve this.

I just remember, that ever since updating IE 6 to IE 7, the volume icon disappeared from task bar, now that tells me something is wrong with the browser, as the missing sound is only when I am using a browser to try to listen to stuff. On the other hand, even this does not make any sence, as with FF it is the same problem.

[caperjack]

in IE7 go to tools /manage add-ons ,and make sure that the ones for sound are enabled

[Kraai]

Hi caperjack

Yes, they are enabled, both in IE and in FF.

[Kraai]

I format the hard drive and re installed windows. Not even a repair install helped this situation. I still am buffed as to what happened. All the Google searches and possible solutions did not help this one.