Lost sound on my laptop

[Urban Rider]

Can anyone help with this..

I have a HP pavillion DV6000 series laptop and lost all the sound on it a week or so ago . I've been on to the HP Technical dept who have tried all the normal stuff, sound settings, deleting and re-installing all the drivers but all to no avail. They have told me the next step is to format the hard drive and reset it to the factory settings but I'm a bit dubious about doing this .
I've been out and bought an external hard drive to back up all my programmes so I won't lose anything, but wondered if there are any tech experts who have had this problem before and know an alternative to fix it. The laptop is only 7 months old and still in warranty so will be fixed by HP if the format does'nt work. I have external speakers hooked up but they do not work either. When the sound settings are on the screen and a CD is playing the sound levels react to sound but nothing comes out of the speakers...... Any ideas

 

[SOAA]

Do you have an orange mute button on the laptop?

 

[Urban Rider]

Do you have an orange mute button on the laptop?

No, there is a mute button but itis off. One of the first things I checked.....

 

[Urban Rider]

There is also output from the external speaker socket as i get feedback whenever I plug in the speakers.....

 

[mikepg]

I think you have a broken sound card - or chipset on the audio bit of the mother board.

 

[Urban Rider]

Thanks for all your suggestions guys. I've just been on the phone again to the techs at HP and the problem is now resolved. It was all down to a corrupt file that was installed during a recent update.. Quick system restore back to mid March and all sorted.....