Lost my volume controls? Power Mac G4, OSX 10.4.11

Hello,

This just started today. Mac G-4 Quick Silver running OSX Tiger. My volume controls keep ramping down. Can't hear sound.
States that selected device(internal speakers) has no output control. Can anyone tell me how I can fix this?

When I go in the system prefs, under sound it reads as: internal speakers, when I put in headphones it shows the difference. The port reads as: built-in audio. Below in the gray area it shows: Settings for the selected device: The selected device has no output controls. Then below that it reads:
Output volume and the mute button is selected. When I go to unselect it pops back on. The speaker itself works, because during various reset attempts I could hear the chime. I can also hear headphones and speaker for brief moment when I manually try to adjust volume control both on key board or in menu, but it will not hold, it drops back to zero.

Weird part is that about 2 hours ago everything seemed normal again and itunes played and I was able to adjust volume without any problems. Then about hour later the volume gray box popped back up on my desk top and went to zero again(all the way to left) with no sound and now the box will not go away. Light gray with volume symbol.

Any thoughts? I'm baffled. Recently put in wireless card and airport extreme base, but when I disconnected problem still occurs.

Thanks again,

Bingball

hey bingball, I probably shouldn't post, but here goes.
try going into another user account and using something with sound or the sound preference pane, if sound works fine, go back to your account and delete the sound preference pane file located at:
mac hd> users> your username> library> preferences> delete file> com.apple.soundpref.plist then empty the trash can, restart and post back.

volume back?

Macman, Sorry for late reply. Had been checking back, but didn't see reply. Problem went away for a bit, but returned again. I followed your instructions and I did have volume control and sound in another user format. I also had sound as the original user, but I could not locate "com.apple.soundpref.plist". It just wasn't there, so nothing to delete. But as of this posting all seems to be working once again.

Thanks so much for the help, but how come I could find the above?

Take Care,

Bingball

Still having issues

Seemed to be fine since last posting. Now same problems. Mute can't be turned off. Volume just ramps down. When I switch to another user no problems, but when I go back to me same issues. When I look for or search for com.apple.soundpref.plist nothing can be found. What happened and is there anything I can do to correct this? Really getting frustrated. Thanks again.

Here is an update. This issue seems to happen whenever I hit the connect to airport extreme base station. Happens after every restart. I found a bizarre solution. I press the power button of my tower, screen goes dark, I press again and sound is back and mute is off. Glad this works, but why does this work and why is extreme causing these issues? Thanks

You say everything is ok in a new user: did you try connecting to the AirPort while you tested out the new account? Try connecting to the AirPort and see if it happens there as well.

Finally figured out problem

TA-Da! It turned out it was not the Airport Extreme or the card. All the freaky issues were because of the Logitech LX5 Cordless Optical Mouse. Why? Not sure, but that is what the problem was. Hopefully the store will take it back. I guess the lesson is only add new items one item at a time, that way easier to figure out what is up. Of course as soon as this was figured out lost my second monitor(Starlogic). Whow! lasted one year and 2 months. Of course warranty was for one year. Grab an Acer(3year warranty), so far so good.

Thanks for all the help and suggestions, it helped me get to the bottom of this issue. Bingball out.

Glad to see you got it sorted out.

selected device has no output control

I lost all sound but hadn't been using any headphones, maybe it was due to updates, finally I found something I could try, being a very simple mac user!I reset my PRAM (had to look up how to do it) and it is all back, hopefully this will save someone else tearing their hear out