Unable to get sound out of 3.5 jack, out of ideas on what to do.
This is about a prebuilt Asus desktop.
My cousin mentioned that the sound suddenly stopped working on his computer. So far, from everything I have seen, it appears to likely be a hardware issue, but I would like to know for sure I have exhausted every other option before we drop money for a new soundcard. This is specifically referring to audio coming out of the 3.5 inch headphone-like jack.
So, I tried to look into it, but the system was so massively infected I couldn't even get some malware scanners to finish scanning even after running for days, and they were finding literally over a thousand infections, so we agreed it would be best to just reformat and start over. I figured with the mess the system was in, with dozens of programs and popups ads appearing on boot and being unable to open any webpage due to all the browser hijacks, some of those were likely messing with the sound.
I reinstalled Windows 7 and Ubuntu, setup as dualboot. I let Windows Update download the drivers for the sound card, and it was identified as Realtek HD hardware, no surprise there since it was built into the motherboard.
So I tried plugging the system in through HDMI, and I got sound in Windows.
I tried Ubuntu, and still got sound over HDMI. So then I tried the 3.5 jack in Ubuntu, both the one in the back and the "headphone" jack in the front of the case..... and nothing, it didn't even identify any other sound hardware.
I figured Ubuntu might not recognize the sound hardware properly (it definitely had issues with my Sound Blaster Z on my own desktop) plus I am not that good with Linux, so I booted into Windows..... and still nothing, neither front or back. When I went into Window's sound settings it showed both the front and rear jacks in the settings, but claimed nothing was plugged into them no matter what I plugged in.
I could hear nothing out of the headphones I was plugging into the abck at all, not even static, though I could hear static out of one ear from the front jacks. Messing with the volume or other settings on the PC didn't have any effect on the static.
So then I decided to go to Asus's website and download the audio drivers, it installed some Realtek Audio Manager app. Installing these also made the front ports disappear from sound settings.
Still nothing, either port. I opened the Realtek app to take a look, and it showed a visual representation of the rear and front ports on the right of the app's window.... all greyed out. Plugging anything into any of the ports didn't show any response. Furthermore, it only showed tabs to adjust sound settings for the optical sound port, not the 3.5 inch ports.
I opened it up and checked for loose cables. The front jacks are the only ones with any wires, since the rear ones at soldered onto the motherboard, I tried unplugging and replugging them to make sure they weren't loose.... nothing.
Finally, I also checked in the BIOS settings, and the on-board sound is indeed enabled.
At this point, I am out of ideas of what else I can try, if there is anything else I can try.
Does anyone have any other ideas on what I can try to test to make sure it's the hardware and not something else? Or is it pretty much guaranteed to be the sound hardware failing at this point?
