No sound through speakers in Vista using Bootcamp

This problem is nn a new 15" Macbook Pro 2008 Uni-body.

The sound used to work in Vista but now it doesn't. There's a red light emanating from the headphone jack so I looked up a bunch of threads on it which told me it was the optical audio being toggled to "on". The sound card seems to work fine (all drivers installed) while checking the settings in Vista. Even the tests seem to play something but no sound is coming from the internal speakers. When I plug in headphones, there is no sound coming from them either. I have uninstalled the sound card and had vista reinstall it on restart but to no avail.

I'm guessing the optical audio is permanently on now? I have had no luck with finding threads on disabling the optical audio in vista. Jiggling the headphone plug in the jack didn't work either. Just for clarification, the sound works just great in OSX and no red light problems there.

Anyone have any idea? Thanks for reading!

I'm assuming that you checked the various places in Vista where the sound can be muted? No speaker play, no headphone play could be caused by a system mute.

You said that sound used to work in Vista. What if anything was done to Vista that would have caused the sound to turn off? Any new hardware? New software? New drivers? etc. Do some detective work and back trace to see what may have happened to cause the sound to stop.

It's obviously not a hardware problem with the machine since sound works OK in OS X.

Regards.

chscag, thanks for your reply

Nothing new was added. I have checked the usual spots for a system mute but it shouldn't be a mute because sound files can still be played....just no sound is physically heard either from the system speakers or a non-optical audio speaker system.

Researching on the internet led me to the red light in the speaker-out jack. It's always on when using Vista via Bootcamp. The red light being on means that the optical audio input was triggered somehow (since the speaker-out jack also doubles as an optical audio jack). Since the optical audio was triggered, the computer thinks there is an alternate speaker connection so it bypasses the system speakers and is attempting to output it to an optical audio speaker set. I'm guessing that once that light is disabled, sound will return to Vista. What I am at a loss to is how do I disable this optical audio. I have tried everything I can see and think of within Vista but to no avail.

I hope this helps clarify things more!

OK, I understand the problem a bit better now. It's possible that the Windows audio driver set you're using for Vista is turning on the optical audio output option in Vista. Just a WAG on my part.

Try either updating the driver or even another driver. Also, have you installed the Boot Camp 2.1 update for Vista? Since it also contains updated drivers and some fixes, it might solve your problem.

I find it strange that it previously worked. Now I know why I still use XP on my Windows machines.

Let us know.

Regards.