I have a Win7 laptop, a HP Pavilion dv6, and it just started to make a clicking sound before playing every sound, as though it is powering the amplifier for the speakers and then turning it off. It hadn't done this before, and the only thing I did to the system between it doing this and not is RUNNING CloneZilla, which probably didn't do anything (this was a backup operation).

I find it odd that it even does this when the speakers are muted, but I haven't been getting any sound, period, out of the headphone jack; I know that I used to be able to.

HP's support, I know, is less than ideal - they would have me do a system recovery with discs that were never shipped to me, which would later require me to reinstall programs I cannot reinstall (stupid activation count limits).

I have all the latest updates from MS installed, and a run of the HD in ClamAV (booting from a LINUX CD) turned out clean; additionally, the MBR of the disk is untouched from the backup I made last month.

Is there any known solution to this problem, or is it a hardware problem that I could order a part for? I _cannot_ send the system to HP because they will wipe it, and the problem with the programs I can't reinstall.


EDIT: I just found a link to the Beats audio entering power saving - the dialog allows setting a power saving mode time from 0 to 100 seconds; 0 does not disable it, though, but rather makes it immediatly enter power saving. I do not want it to click at all, though, so 100 seconds is far too shortYou are familiar with Linux and are questioning whether its hardware related vs Microsoft Windows driver. I'd go with booting off of an ISO of Linux such as Ubuntu and see if the audio issue is still there when running Ubuntu as a LiveOS direct from CD or DVD without installing it to HD. Visit a website with music or sound and see if it acts the same as in windows. If it does then you know its hardware related, otherwise I'd be looking at drivers.

My favorite LiveOS for troubleshooting systems is Knoppix which is intended to run Live from Read-Only STATE. Ubuntu is good too, but dont have as many bells and whistles. I also have a bootable thumb drive with Fedora 16 on it that is a useful tool, so if you know how to make a bootable thumb drive you can go that route too.2AM is not the best time to be troubleshooting, which is when I was on the first message. 7AM isn't either, which is now

I didn't feel that going and burning a new SLAX disc was entirely necessary, given that people have trouble with ALSA going into a power saving state already, which itself causes the same symptom. Also Windows likely has more specialised drivers for the hardware than Linux does, and the more specialised driver could have power modes or something.

I burned a new SLAX disc and, upon booting it, when detecting resolutions, the computer rebooted. It apparently hates SLAX. I'll bring some CD-RWs to college and try to find a working disc. Irionicly enough, I destroyed two of HP's partitions to make space for an eventual Linux install on here (why they needed to ship with four partitions on the system is beyond me). I did this over a month ago, though.

I need to leave in 3 minutes, I'll be back laterFor some reason I cannot modify my previous post - must be the different IP here at college.

I tried to boot SLAX again EARLIER, and failed. Then I dumped the ISO that I burned and found that it differed from the source image...I think the media is faulty. Anyway, I currently have the timeout for the sound hardware at 60 seconds IIRC, and have enabled/disabled the hardware as needed. I discovered shortly before I left home that my headphones are to fault for no sound out that jack, I will test it again later with a known functional set of speakers.

I will later dig into the registry to see if I can find a key for the timeout for power saving on the audio. Then I will see if I can force it to be 7200 seconds (two hours). Right now, with the headache I got from the speaker popping, a bit of lost power is no problem (I am normally at a socket anyway). And if that doesn't work, I'll set it to 100 seconds and write a program in VB6 that will try to play a dummy audio file every minute - which should hopefully keep the hardware powered properly. I will also keep trying to get a Linux distro to boot - even if it means making a partition on the HD to hold a disc image to boot from.