No sound :(

[xsamx1987]

Hello all OK so my friend asked me to look at his computer it is a old dell dimension 2400 half gig of ram running windows xp sp3

OK so the problem is that his sound dosent work all the time ive checked the usual things cable- driver- conflicts- that kind of thing the weird thing is when the sound dosent work it enables the on board speaker so if I go to volume control and move the bar up and down I hear the dunk dunk sound from the on board speaker oh and the on board sound is enabled on the bios

any way home some one with a better mind then me can help

re posted as put in wrong category sorry

[rfm33428]

I would also try to boot a live cd, Linux distro of some sort, to see if it's isolated to Windows or a hardware problem. Then go from there. Who knows, maybe there's something funky going on with Windows that you don't see on the surface.

I don't want to rule anything out, but it sounds like (at least when the sound is working) that it's the hardware. I'd disable the sound on the motherboard and remove the driver. Then install a new sound card and install the driver for it.

[justpeon]

Ditto on the linux. Knoppix is a good distro for that.