Speakers..... dead

I got home today and turned on my laptop to find that no sound was coming out of it. If I put headphones in, the sounds come out fine, but aside from that, there's no sound. Any ideas?

Assuming you use windows, at least one simple possibility comes to mind. Check the control panel for sound/audio devices and make sure that your laptop speakers are set as your default sound/playback device, make sure the volume is not muted or turned all the way down.

Failing that, you can make sure your onboard sound is enabled in the BIOS. Check the manufacturer's website for information on how to get into the BIOS when the laptop powers on. Usually you hit a key like F12, or F8, or F1, or F2 or delete in order to enter the "steup" utility. From there look for a menu that allows you to configure "integrated devices" or "peripherals". Locate the sound settings and make sure the speakers are enabled.

If both of the above check out, it could be driver corruption or hardware issue/failure. You may need to involve the manufacturers tech support to determine whats up at that point.

What bewilders me is that it was working just this morning.... checking the control panel now, will check the BIOS as soon as I have a little more time to do it.

Also, rolling back/re-updating the driver to see if an auto-update messed up somewhere

Success! Rolling back the driver did it! Thanks dave! It's a good thing I started with the easiest thing to get to lol

Now I seem to be getting REALLY choppy sound on the music I have in the background when running any games (NwN, WoW, etc.) Any ideas there?

My best guess is that the processer is overloaded and takes it from the least intensive active program that it can 'spare.' However, even setting my music player (iTunes) to above average priority didn't fix this. (Theoretically, that should make the processer consider other programs to take from before itunes, but it didn't seem to work too well)

Do you get choppy music when just the music player is running?

Have you recently installed any new programs?

No, only when I use both, and no new programs have been added lately

Well, its not your speakers, then. And if it only happens when you have additional programs open, then yes.... it is most likely due to insufficient processing or memory resources.

How much ram does the system have? and What speed is the processor, and how many cores is it? And its win7, correct?

Vista
3gigs RAM
CoreDuo - 2 GHz/2 GHz

I realize it isn't speakers in this case, but since the thread was already about sound system, I figured it was relatively fitting to post here.

Thats interesting. Better specs than my machine, and I can handle NWN and ventrilo and/or mp3player program with only VERY minimal choppiness when the mp3player is changing tracks.

Well, I dont think it is hardware. Im looking at maybe background tasks (antivirus, java, adobe, or windows auto updates, or some other intermittently processor intensive task that doesnt show an open application window or maybe not evn a system tray icon)... or perhaps a configuration setting in one of the programs or sound control panel.