[SOLVED] "Audio Device is Disabled"...um, not

TrainableMan -- I did, to the point they say "re-install Windows". The thing is, I just got 10 of these machines... so it seems crazy that I have to re-install Windows on them all... I'm grasping at straws I guess hoping someone has a solution. This isn't the first weird thing that has happened in Windows 7 that is un-explainable and resulted in Microsoft or Dell saying "just re-install Windows"... so maybe whatever the solution is found can be applied to those weird cases.

I'm also opening a case with Microsoft, so I'll post if they have anything useful to say.

Typical, they always blame the other guy. It's not us, it's Microsoft; no it's not us it's Dell.

It's probably something simple like a driver or a registry setting but they are too busy blaming the other guy. OK you said it worked and suddenly didn't - was it after a Windows update? Immediately after you installed the software you mentioned?

Sometimes Windows update installs drivers it thinks are right that can actually be older than those from the manufacturer. Have you checked in device manager to see if you can roll-back any drivers related to sound? (If you can rollback it would seem to indicate they have been updated at some point)

Dan365 - have you tried going to the Sound section of Control Panel and then right-click in the window and choose "Show Disabled Devices". If you do that and then choose "Enable" you should be able to get the sound working.

This trick has worked for several friends and clients of mine when they had issues regarding sound.


Right-click in the above window and then select: Show Disabled Devices

I had this happen on some client systems today at work. To fix the issue I just went into the device manager uninstalled all the audio devices, rebooted and installed the driver that came with the device, I.E. stored driver. Hope this helps
Cheers

Tayhull, this thread is over 4 months old and is marked solved. I realize if you are used to day-month-year format this may seem to be only a few days old but dates here are in the format MM-DD-YYYY so the last post was from January 5th not May 1st.

Your answer can stay as it could help someone searching for a similar solution but generally avoid posting to threads with no active posts in 3 months

Welcome to W7forums.

After literally days of searching online I have finally found someone with the same problem as me. Clicking enable or disable or configure on the context menu associated with the audio devices in the playback list does nothing.

There is a nice green checkmark next to the audio device that is currently plugged in but on my task bar it says no speakers or headphones plugged in and the icon has a speaker with a small red x next to it.

I've tried everything with no luck. Really don't want to have to reformat and install.

The problems is with windows security and the drivers. I found a working solution here:

http://www.techsupportforum.com/foru...ge-594113.html