Speaker Icon Missing in Taskbar

dan239 · 18th April 2004

I got my WinXP PRO installed and have solved all of the issues except I do not have a speaker icon in the notification area of the Taskbar. This means I do not have volume control or a means of muting. I do have speaker sound which is apparently at full volume.

I have tried uninstalling the audio driver and let Windows detect and reinstall. This has made no difference. My audio driver is by Realtek number AC'97.

In the Control Panel/Sounds and Audio Devices/Volume tab, it shows "No Audio Device". This is where the option to put the speaker icon in the Taskbar is, but it is grayed out.

The Multi Channel Sound Manager in Control Panel does nothing. The test speakers will not make a sound.

Any help will be appreciated.

Daniel

**JSS3rd** · 18th April 2004

Have you checked Device Manager to see if everything is normal under "Sound, video and game controllers"?

dan239 · 18th April 2004

Jim

Not sure what you mean as normal, but the Realtek AC'97 Audio is listed.

I have listed under "Sound, video and game controllers".

Audio Codecs
Legacy Audio Drivers
Legacy Video Capture Devices
Media Control Devices
Realtek AC'97 Audio
Unimodem Half-Duplex Audio Device
Video Codecs

Does this look normal?

Daniel

**JSS3rd** · 18th April 2004

By "normal", I meant that you found no yellow warning signs with black exclamation points, indicating a problem with that component.

Your components look OK to me, but it's possible that some drivers or codecs are out of date. The Realtek site shows some recent updates for AC'97, so you might try them. Good luck.

dan239 · 18th April 2004

I downloaded the driver from Realtek and installed it.

It did activate the Multi Channel Sound Manager but the Control Panel/Sounds and Audio Devices/Volume tab still shows "No Audio Device".

This is progress, but I still do not have the speaker icon for volume and muting.

Daniel

absentmindedJWC · 18th April 2004

XP pro: Start menu - Control Panel - sounds and audio devices - (sorry but i have to say this, normally the small things gets overlooked) is "Place volume icon in the taskbar checked"?

if it is, try reinstalling the drivers

Good luck
Jason

absentmindedJWC · 18th April 2004

oh, did not see your last post, sorry

dan239 · 19th April 2004

That's OK Jason

It is still grayed out and I would assume that is because the volume tab still indicates "No Audio Device".

I have reinstalled the drivers several times and it has not recognized an audio device in the volume tab yet.

Daniel

dan239 · 19th April 2004

I have good news.

I was looking around in the Sounds and Audio Devices Properties and I noticed that in the Audio tab it showed the wrong thing in the 2 sound boxes for default device. I changed these to the Realtek option and applied the changes. Suddenly I had 'Realtek AC97 Audio' shown on the Volume tab.

Now the mute and icon option are available and I have got what I was trying to accomplish.

I hope this helps someone else if they encounter this same situation.

Thanks to all for helping me solve this.

Daniel

**JSS3rd** · 19th April 2004

Great! Glad you've got it figured out.

absentmindedJWC · 19th April 2004

see, as i said. The simple things are the ones that you overlook. Thats great that you figured out the solution to your problem.

Jason