Cousin dropped laptop, sound doesn't work

[123456]

Got a late night call from my cousin who dropped his laptop from his bed and he says the only thing is the sound no longer works. Headphones don't work either if they are plugged in. Told him to reboot, nada. Reinstall drivers, awaiting reply. He goes to college a few hundred miles away so I can't make a housecall... any other advice? It's only a few months old and still under warranty. It's a Dell :eek: Inspiron M5010

[Sylvander]

If it were me, what I'd do:

1. Boot a "live" Puppy Linux CD-RW disk...
And if the sound worked in Puppy, I'd know the hardware is OK.
THEN...

2. I'd scan the internal HDD Windows partition filesystem...
And fix any problems found.
Normally I'd use "Puppy->Menu->System->GParted->sda->sda1->Partition->check"...
Which would scan [and fix only if problems found].
Then...

3. If Windows still wouldn't boot...
I'd restore a recent good image backup of the Windows partition contents.

[jlreich]

Sounds like something got knocked loose inside. Might simply be a matter of a loose connector. But I haven't cracked open a Dell laptop for some time and am not familiar with that model. Would be worth a look through the service guide to see where the connectors are at.

[123456]

He called me, saying reinstalling the drivers did the trick. Easy fix. Thanks though.
Sylvander - He's not computer-savvy enough to even download an ISO and burn it :P

[Sylvander]

1. "He's not computer-savvy enough to even download an ISO and burn it"
Ouch! :(
If I try to think back to when I couldn't do that, it seems very long ago in the dim and distant past.
Puppy Linux makes it so simple...
Rid-ic-ul-ous-ly so.

Just today I used Burniso2cd to burn a Luci-233 CD-RW...
And booted it...
And the Luci-232 [actually the contents of the lupusave.3fs file] was automatically updated...
And I used Pburn to erase the table of contents [TOC] of the Luci-232 CD-RW...
So that CD-RW is now available for use once more as a BLANK CD. :)

[LochLomonder]

123456,

He goes to college a few hundred miles away so I can't make a housecall... any other advice?

Just something to consider in future. When helping friends and colleagues, I use TeamViewer (http://www.teamviewer.com/download/tv5.aspx) as a remote desktop solution. Of course, I never offer that as an option to strangers on a forum, since this level of trust should be reserved for people you know well (such as your cousin).