Headphones not detecting in XP

[canadaboy25]

Hey guys, I have a Toshiba Satellite a205 laptop running a fresh install of windows XP. I have been having some interesting issues with the headphone jack detection. If I plug headphones into the jack, the sound keeps playing from the speakers and not out of the headphones. The realtek audio manager also shows that there is nothing plugged in. If I leave the headphones plugged in and restart the computer with them in, when the computer boots up the sound will play from the headphones just fine. The thing is if you unplug the headphones the laptop will keep trying to play out the headphone jack and no sound will come from the speakers. The realtek audio manager shows that there are headphones connected to the jack even though there aren't. The only way to get the speakers back is to restart it again.

I know the port itself is not the problem because it detects when the headphones are plugged in and unplugged perfectly fine on another installation of linux I have. My drivers are installed correctly and up to date. Any ideas what the problem could be?

Thanks

[stj]

Re: Headphones not detecting in XP

check the bios,
if it has an Azalia sound chip then it can run in emulation mode pretending to be some old crap.

[hasefroch]

Re: Headphones not detecting in XP

IIRC, that Toshiba is from the generation that was crippled to not work correctly in xp. Due to this, the usual suspects are:
-Wrong driver (this means right chipset with bad connector assignment).
-You have to either install the hotfix KB 888111 or have SP3 installed before installing the audio drivers or the audio codec won't be recognized accurately.

I don't have the notes about the install anymore, but basically this it what I did:
-Download the drivers for windows vista 32 bit from Toshiba's official web.
-Unpack the driver with WinRar
-Uninstall the actual driver. If necessary, cancel the prompt of 'new hardware'
-From the unpacked driver, go to the folder MSHDQFE, select the correct version of the hotfix 888111 and install it. Reboot if prompted.
-When the 'new hardware found' prompts, select the option to install manually and point it to the WDM folder from the driver unpacked.
This should solve it.

Some audio chipsets also require to delete a wrong registry entry generated for the old driver, so the new driver can write the correct config. Sadly, I can't recall exactly which one, only that was related to HDAUDIO (possibly HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Enum/HDAUDIO , but don't quote me on that).

Hope this helps.

[canadaboy25]

Re: Headphones not detecting in XP

IIRC, that Toshiba is from the generation that was crippled to not work correctly in xp. Due to this, the usual suspects are:
-Wrong driver (this means right chipset with bad connector assignment).
-You have to either install the hotfix KB 888111 or have SP3 installed before installing the audio drivers or the audio codec won't be recognized accurately.

I don't have the notes about the install anymore, but basically this it what I did:
-Download the drivers for windows vista 32 bit from Toshiba's official web.
-Unpack the driver with WinRar
-Uninstall the actual driver. If necessary, cancel the prompt of 'new hardware'
-From the unpacked driver, go to the folder MSHDQFE, select the correct version of the hotfix 888111 and install it. Reboot if prompted.
-When the 'new hardware found' prompts, select the option to install manually and point it to the WDM folder from the driver unpacked.
This should solve it.

Some audio chipsets also require to delete a wrong registry entry generated for the old driver, so the new driver can write the correct config. Sadly, I can't recall exactly which one, only that was related to HDAUDIO (possibly HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Enum/HDAUDIO , but don't quote me on that).

Hope this helps.

Thanks so much this fixed it. I already had SP3 installed so all I had to do was uninstall the old driver and install it again using the driver from the WDM folder.

Thanks again.

[atrace63]

Re: Headphones not detecting in XP

You need to install driver.

[jiroy]

Re: Headphones not detecting in XP

Although it might be a Drivers problem , but sometimes it's not . So before heading to reinstalling , Formatting or anything else , one should check and understand how Multimedia players work .

Let's take for an example the VLC Player (Or any other player ) and start watching a movie or a song with it . If a Headphone is inserted , it won't produce sound , and it will act like it isn't there . From the VLC panel , click on Audio devices , and you'll see two or three options . One of them will be Headphones , click on it and the Headphones will pop up .