Laptops are a challenge

[Magnum]

I have had a few people bring me laptops to work on.

I noticed that they break down more frequently than desktop systems.

I had one customer whose speakers stopped working. Speaker icon had a slash thru it.

The BIOS had nothing that controlled the speakers.

Since his O.S. was in Spanish, I was almost working on guess work in translating Spanish to English.

I started up System Information for Windows and then then speakers started working again.

Customer returned with the same problem.

Is there some freeware diagnostic that help me using English ?

I am thinking that the crammed up insides and the heat produced puts the "kapowee" on the hardware. :-)

[clive]

Sounds like they are pressing the FN-Mute button. On my Acer it's FN-F8, with the volume controls on cursor keys. You could look up the laptop in question and see if there is a keyboard map on the internet if the keys have lost their legends.



You should also be able to double click on the speaker icon, and either un-mute it there, or bring up the rest of the mixer sliders.

[Magnum]

Thanks.

I forgot to post that is is running Windows 7.

[hutch--]

 :bg

Laptops, horrible nasty little things, expensive, underperformed, hard to fix and easy to steal. I like computers in Server cases with screwdriver free internals so they are easy to work on, terabytes of storage, as much memory as the OS will support etc etc ....

[vanjast]

Have a 'squeek' over at the Acer website, They have drivers that enable the hardware on their laptops.
It'll require a bit of searching to find the right drivers, as they try get you to install a load of irrelevant garbage with the drivers.

There's also a technician's repair website (I forget the name) where you can buy repair manuals (legally) for just about any equipment.
I bought an Acer Laptop manual to repair mine as Acer were trying to 'scre.w' me. To 'thumb my nose' at them, I emailed them pics of my work done
Strangely enough, they didn't reply to that email  :bg
I was a simple 5 minute thing that they wanted to charge me $$$$$$$ for. :tdown

:8)