Remember the Basics

Last night I managed to blow out the computer speakers and the attached headphones. For some odd reason I keep on building these big static charges and when I brushed up against the headphone clip, ZAP, $500+ worth of sound equipment goes bye-bye. I was pretty frustrated, but I think the headphones are under warranty and I found suitable replacement speakers on eBay.

As part of testing the headphones, I had hooked them up to the laptop. Tonight, Shauna found that the laptop got no sound. My first thought was that the headphones had somehow toasted the sound system, a suspicion confirmed when I hooked up a working pair of headphones and had the same issue. So what do I proceed to do? I tear down the laptop to it's guts to see if the sound chip is replaceable, that's what. Naturally, it wasn't. I put the laptop back together (producing an "extra" screw in the process), start it up, and…

The sound started working. If I'd thought about it logically for just a few seconds, I would have taken the time to restart the computer to see if that fixed it. Instead, I spent an hour tearing apart a laptop that was perfectly fine. Just goes to show that sometimes basic steps can fix the problems.