Audio / Sound

[miker643]

You need to do the recovery first, and make sure the sound card is working properly. Then, from your model's Toshiba downloads site, make sure you have the most up-to-date hardware drivers. The best way to avoid 'hundreds of updates' is to download and install Vista SP1 and Vista SP2, which together will contain the vast majority of the Windows updates you need.

See the guides, make sure to check and follow the 'pre-deployment tasks'. Download the files and copy to disks or USB device.

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Deployment Guide

Windows Vista Service Pack 1 Download (434MB)

Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Deployment Guide

Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Download (348MB)

After having installed SP1, and after installing SP2, check both times that Windows Update is still set for only manual updates. After having successfully installed SP2, then manually run Windows Update, checking carefully to not allow Windows Update to change any of your hardware drivers.

Good luck.

Mike

[ruffian]

Okay, thanks. I'm going to try it all Monday when I have some time. When you said to check the sound card after recovery, is there anything in particular I should do?

[miker643]

Just check to make sure the sound seems to be working properly.

Good luck.

Mike

[ruffian]

Well this is pretty bizarre. In a final act of desperation before using the recovering disks, I opened the folder with the driver you had me download and did an install from there yesterday. Initially, nothing changed even after I powered down/up. But when I powered up this morning, there was a message that the driver had installed and everything is working fine - at least for now.

[miker643]

Well in reading back I see that I specifically said not to install it, as we were trying to get rid of all the old drivers to try to get Windows to recognize your sound card again. So, at least trying to install the correct driver before doing a recovery was a good idea. But, you should still disable automatic Windows Updates as I've described a couple of times previously.

Congratulations on resolving your problem. Good luck on its continued stability. Thanks for letting us know.

Mike

[ruffian]

Thanks and, yes, I did disable those automatic udpates.

[pnclement]

Mike,

Actually I am having the exact same problem with a used laptop I just bought from a private party.  For the first week or so, I had sound.  When I didn't have sound, I shut off the computer and it gave me a windows option screen for starting windows and I'd get my sound icon back.  However I lost it about one week ago and I'm following the same steps you've posted here.  Hope I have the same good results.

Patrick

[KBHR]

I have lost so many hours trying to fix my satellite U305-S5077, downloading updates, uninstalling/reinstalling software, etc.  Nothing seemed to help.

Eventually, I came up with a fast and simple solution that always gets my audio back whenever my laptop thinks there is no audio output device installed. You might want to give it a try. Here's the link http://forums.toshiba.com/t5/Audio-Sound/No-Audio-Output-Device-Installed-How-I-got-my-audio-working...

Best of luck,

Danny

[ruffian]

Uggh. After 3 weeks of working fine, my problem has returned. The audio was working normally and suddenly began crackling a bit when I adjusted the volume dial. I restarted to see if it would go away and when it came back on the "no audio output device installed" error was there. I've restarted, done a system restore, tried to reinstall the driver from both the disk and the download from earlier in this thread several times and had no success. There have been no updates since I disabled those when the problem was corrected earlier in the month, so that didn't cause this to occur again. I also tried the "sleep" suggestion above and that did nothing. Any suggestions?