• ASUS netbook sound not working
    3 replies, posted
Today, my 1.5 year-old ASUS X64VG 16" WXGA laptop started behaving odd in regards to sound. It appears to be able to produce no sound from the onboard speakers or my headphones. However, my USB speaker seems to work. Rather than giving off sound the speakers produce ear-raping scratching/screeching noises. Occasionally these noises appear in place of ordinary sound, at other times it seems to (somewhat) correlate with HDD activity. I'm not really sure how to approach this error. The last thing I did when the sound was in working state was plug in some external 2.1 speakers. I also did a registry cleanup with CCleaner. Are the speakers busted? If so, why doesn't headphones work either? Could the soundcard be broken? But if that was the case, how come USB playback works? Any help is appreciated, please!
It sounds like the sound chip is damaged, probably from excessive heat over a long period of time. USB speakers work fine because they aren't actually using the onboard sound chip, they have their own sound chip in them. If you have an extended warranty, you could try RMAing the laptop for them to fix. If not, you can search the used market for replacement motherboards for the laptop.
Thanks for the reply. I left it on overnight downloading something, and today when I "woke" it the sound actually worked normally for about 30 seconds, then went back to crackling. Is this further evidence the onboard sound chip is damaged? Is there any way to verify before I start tearing my netbook apart to replace the mobo (or return it, seems like the factory guarantee is 24 months)?
If the netbook is under warranty, RMA it. Those things are a pain in the ass to take apart.
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