If things on your computer used to hum along all fine and dandy and then one day the music stopped (or any and all sound), what happened?

All computers that have speakers and make noice (e.g., music) have a sound card. A sound card makes it possible for you computer to send noice to the speakers. Sound cards are the hardware installed somewhere in that box that communicates between the software and the speakers. How do these sound cards process the audio data and get it to the speakers?

That is where what are called drivers come in to play. Drivers (software) or better known as device drivers allow hardware components to work with the operating system. So for audio devices (i.e., sound cards) in order for the computer to send noise to the speakers a driver is working with the sound card to make it all work.

However problems do happen, so what do you do? If your system used to work fine and now it is not working properly or at all anymore the cause can be many things.

The first and easiest to try and troubleshoot is to check to see if everything is still plugged in (e.g., speakers, cables, etc). Many times it is as simple as something came loose. Another thing that can happen is the sound card device driver needs to be updated. Maybe you installed new hardware or something and the device drivers no longer work.

You can go to the websites of the manufacurers and see if they have any updated sound card drivers you can download and install. This can be time consuming though and sometimes trying to determine which driver and which hardware are the problem is tough.

Any easier way to find and fix a problem with your sound device is to use software made to fix driver problems on your computer.