Is this possible?

Captain Beer

Captain Beer

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Sorry for what seems like an arb question. A customer bought a new set of speakers from me recently. The customer is now complaining that the front audio port on their PC is not working and is blaming the new speakers. The new speakers are plugged in the back. The headphones they are trying to use on the front port are working fine when plugged in the back of the PC or through the output on the speakers. I have been building and selling PCs for 12 years and have never heard of something like this. I haven't had a chance to look at the PC myself yet. Is it possible for speakers to cause damage like this?
 
Thanks guys. The front ports are connected. I built the PC myself. Haven't tried anything else in the front yet, will ask the customer to try. The ports are at the bottom of the casing and the PC sits on the floor. I have a feeling something was plugged in the port and was stepped on, causing damage to the ports. But the speakers are getting the blame at the moment.
 
It could be that the front panel audio is disabled in the BIOS or that it's not plugged in.

Did the front panel audio work before they've plugged in the speakers, and did the customer change any settings (BIOS/drivers) since then?

If its a cheap case, like my Coolermaster RC-310, then it is also possible that the audio port broke after they've plugged in the speakers, in which case the cheap case is to be blamed for poor audio sockets. With my case I really struggle to insert & remove the 3.5mm audio jacks.
 
Could it be possible that the audio is set to mute the front audio when it is plugged in the back? or something like that?
 
If its a realtech audio chipset make sure the realtech software is loaded. The auto detect makes it much easier to configure headphones speakers ect. Dunno how old the system is but check if its got HD sound or not. There's normally two plugs from the front panel, one for HD and one for normal.
 
Check ports are on the header (done as already stated)
Check BIOS settings
Install drivers (not the crappy generic ones windows auto-installs) / check utility software settings
Is there audio from the front when the back is unplugged?

Its possible that your audio chip might be faulty.
 
Make sure that you use the right front panel connector... I swapped round the AC97/HD connector once, which also caused some weird, unreproducible errors.
 
What motherboard/audio chipset? Some are problematic & some drivers have settings to mute front audio when rear in use...
 
At my office 2 of the PC's front audio didn't work, simply because the proprietary audio drivers wasn't installed, instead of the "working" Microsoft drivers.
My guess is that this would be the most likely cause.

I'm pretty sure we've listed all the possible problems here already and that I'm like all the other people curiously waiting on an update ;)
 
Also remember to check default audio devices, etc: Nothing is painful as trouble shooting for 2 hours just to find out that your default audio device is set to USB ...
 
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