MWV
 

I got back home to a sour mood amongst the troops. It seems my wife's estimations of inchling awareness of his third birthday were WAY OFF. All day long he kept asking where's Dad? (At a funeral of a lifelong family friend, 3 hours away) and to top it off he could't watch his Thomas video because there was no audio. All volume controls on and mute off.

This a.m. I am perplexed because everything was working fine when I left. Cannot figure out why it won't work. Anyone here have any clues?

Are we talking VCR or DVD? Audio through the TV or an external sound system?

Layout details, plz. My stuff is such a mess, I have no pic/audio frequently because I am too goofy to remember to turn something on.

Sorry. it's the DVD on the computer, watching on the monitor. The odd thing is when I click on explore I get a folder that lists all the vidoe tracks, but the audio folder is empty. I checked with known dvds and it is the same. maybe that's normal.

I get the same problem regardless of the drive I put the dvd into. All the connections are good and I have audio on youtube playback and cds.

1. Check the sound card mixer to see if any inputs are muted?
2. Using My Computer/Hardware, find your drive and make sure audio is enabled.
3. Check physical connections of speakers, and if they are powered, that they are turned on.

Does it do this with *any* DVD you put in the drive?

Yes, any dvd, even ones that played previously. checking the other stuff now.

tried the troubleshooter, and checked all the setting everything is up. corrupted driver?

Check if soundcard is working properly

sound card is fine, the drive will play cds, it won't play audio in either windows wmv or dell's media player.

How is the DVD drive hooked up to the sound card? That cable (probably an internal one) might be loose.

If it was loose, wouldn't I be unable to play audio cds on that drive? cds play fine.

Last time you cleaned the lens? The DVD?

I'm so dumb. What's a MWV? Meapons of Wass Vestruction?

Meals With Veterans.
Get with the program!

I SO suck! :sniff:

Naw... it is easy to get confused. Happens to the best of us.
DON'T LET IT HAPPEN AGAIN!

Shouldn't hurt anything to go to the mfr's website and get the latest driver update and install it. Worth a go.

Possibly dusty, though the machine is only a few months old and what are tha chances of both lenses going crap at the same time. (there are two drives, neither works) No dvd works, so it's not a cleaning issue. Also if it was a dirty dvd or lens you wouldn't get a video signal. In this case the video is fine, just no audio on either drive, with any dvd.

Long before looking for a solution, first establish what is and is not working. Break the problem down into parts. Every responsible computer manufacturer provides comprehensive hardware diagnostics. Tests only hardware without any Windows or drivers to complicate the issue. If the hardware diagnostic test passes, only then move on to drivers, Windows, or media incompatibility. Remember there are numerous DVD R/W standards for the same reason why the silly 'Blue-Ray verses HD-DVD' war is ongoing.

Take it one step at a time. Do the computer hardware diagnostics report a good DVD and sound card?

Taking another tack. What is reported in Windows Device Manager? Does it show any problems with any other hardware? Also critically important information obtained before trying to fix anything.

Audio codecs are a possible point of failure, if DVDs use a different codec than CDs.

Ha! get out your tinfoil hats everyone.
Got through all the various steps of troubleshooting and this is what I turned up:
Hardware is fine
Media are fine
other playback software is fine
Following Dell's troubleshooting flowchart through removing and reinstalling just about everything on my computer, I finally got to the part about downloading the latest version of DirectX software.

When I tried to do that, I was confronted by Microsft's gatekeeper informing me that before I could download DirectX they needed to check my Windows Genuine disAdvantage spyware, I mean software.

The upshot being that I could not upload the new version of WMV since I do not have their spyware installed.

Now that I have remove wga software, I'm tempted to intsll install it just to downlaod the new directx, then ditch it.
In the meantime our 15 yearold babysitter/mathgenius/computerguru had me download VCL which works fine and is free and all that stuff.
[/conspiracy theory]

I just keep wga blocked with McAfee until I need it. ;)