I'm pretty good on operating systems but not so good with hardware problems. Here's a quick story and if any of you can help, I would appreciate it.

Like many of you, I am the first call responder for friends. One has a six-month old HP laptop. The sound on the built-in speakers stopped working today.

He first tried calling HP support, which routed him to a support center in India. They took control of the computer remotely and installed lots of stuff on his desktop to no avail.

By the time I got home and went to look at it, my friend had spent three hours on the phone with support. Still no sound.

I checked the obvious, like Device Manager and the mixer. The system sounds showed an audio signal was being generated. He had no external speakers, so I tried plugging in headphones, and they worked. The headphone jacks had never been used. The online tech didn't think of that one...

Short of taking apart the case and checking for a broken wire to the internal speakers, does anyone have any suggestions? It's still in warranty, but there is the hassle of saving all his data and reinstalling if they just replace it.

Thank you.

BIAB 2025 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 7 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6, Song Master Pro, Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus 192 & Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors.