What causes an onboard audio chipset to be disabled? I can't get any sound from my laptop even though everything looks fine. Drivers installed, then to make sure uninstalled and reinstalled still nothing. There was something about enabling though the bios after reinstalling but as this is an hp no such option exists. Windows does read activity from the mic it just wont play any sounds. I also checked to see that the device used the device in the hardware tab of the audio devices properties dialog. I also set the bios to it's defaults in hope that it would somehow reset itself, it didn't. The laptop is not muted through windows. The device shows as being ok in the hardware manager. Why I thnk it happened in the first place was that I had to take the whole laptop apart to fix a loose dc jack. In the process of doing so I broke the headphone jack's plastic. This along with the mic jack are on a diff daughterboard that plugs into the motherboard. I replaced it with a known working one. Now the thing is that the one replaced wasn't it's original one to begin with. It's from a model that also has a wifi button in it. Though the original doesn't the mic/headphone jacks still work. The one it was replaced with is built for this exact model. From my experience the bioses on these laptops are sensitive to almost any minute change in hardware but they work with a reset of the bios to it's defaults. Given that the daughterboard went from original to the one with a wifi button back to an original one I don't see how this could be a problem. I have succesfully taken and put the laptop back together several times because the fans get really dirty and also to give the cpu a fresh coat of thermal compound. I've also never had problems with audio. I still gotta try removing and reinstalling the drivers in safe mode and see if that makes a difference. It's a ess allegro, and from what i understand the modem also uses it. Connection to the net is ok. Sorry for the long post and I thank in advance anyone that helps me. PS if the above works I'll let you guys know. Truth can become lie, but if lies become truth we're in trouble.

http://www.ergo.co.uk/contact_support.html> Go here and use this laptop serial #V9100354

http://www.esstech.com/techsupp/faq-identify.shtm

For those interested, the I disconnected the modem from the minipci slot booted and voila! To make sure it worked stuck it back in and booted again, and it still works. My guess a modem setting muting it's speaker also muted everything else. I don't know how it happend because I've taken this thing apart several times with no such problems. Truth can become lie, but if lies become truth we're in trouble.