I Have Sound! or, How Assumptions Made Too Early Can Be Wrong

Yesterday, The Big Guy said “Happy Valentine’s Day!” and he also asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I was so moved by this unusual display of affection that my mind went completely blank.

But I eventually recovered, said “Happy Valentine’s Day” back, and told him that all I really wanted for my birthday was the sound to be fixed on my computer.

His reply, “Is that all?” made me actually believe that he was going to fix it for me.

I should make a note to myself: Don’t Make Assumptions Too Quickly.

A few minutes later he plunked down a sound card, a screw, a screw driver, a couple of installation and driver CDs, and an installation booklet on the kitchen counter. “Here you go!”

I’m sure he was very happy that he could fulfill my only birthday wish by simply rummaging through his bins of spare computer parts.

But what I really wanted was for him just to take over the whole problem including what I call Stage One Computer Repair. This means doing the Windows software troubleshooting steps, checking for device conflicts, re-installing and updating drivers, shutting everything down, unplugging all the cables, opening up the box, dismantling various electronic bits, looking for scorch marks, blowing out the dust, reseating boards and cables, re-mantling, plugging in all the cables again, and powering everything back up. I get extremely frustrated if I can’t fix this type of problem right away, which is why I hadn’t even tried to sort it out myself before today.

I don’t want talk about Stage Two Computer Repair.

Stage Three is Buy a New Computer.

I started working through Stage One. The symptom of the sound problem was an extremely loud and annoying hum or buzz that drowned out the sound that’s supposed to be coming out of the speakers. Plus, what sound I could hear over the buzzing seemed very distorted, like it was recorded inside a metal box. The problem started about the same time I upgraded the memory. All this made me think that it wasn’t necessarily a broken sound card, it could be something to do with cables or power or speaker/monitor interference.

With that in mind, I changed the order in which I usually do Stage One Computer Repair and after doing the software troubleshooting and driver updating without any noticeable affect on the problem decided to unplug, move, and reseat every single cable connected to the speakers. I should also mention that while I was rebooting the computer after updating the drivers I noticed that the buzzing was still there when the speakers are powered on even while the computer was powered off!

It’s actually surprising how many cables are connected to the speakers. There’s the speaker power cable connected to an extension cord shared with a desk lamp and another extension cord before plugging into the wall. There’s the cable from the right speaker to the left speaker. There’s the cable from the headphones that plugs into the right speaker. There’s the cable from the right speaker that plugs into the back of the computer.

To make a long and boring story about tinkering with cables shorter, I’ll just say that the problem was fixed by reseating the cable connecting into the back of the computer.

Simple.

Cheap flimsy little connecters!

Now I’m happy.

Not so fast. I’m still running out of space on my hard drive.

So, next, I’ll have to come up with a strategy to get The Big Guy to gift me with a hard drive out of his spare parts supply. This time, with installation included!