My client has a new Dell XPS420 computer with integrated sound support. Speakers are a carryover from her old desktop computer (not sure of brand and model, so will post it as soon as I can get the information). The computer is running Vista Service Pack 1. In spiite of a couple of sessions with Dell technical support, whenver the commputer is put to slepp overnight, the speakers automatically show up as muted when the computer is started. The only way to get sound back is to reboot the computer. Just updated the BIOS and the video driver this week. No impact on sound problem. Am wonderinng if the electronics in the old speakers could be a factor. Dell's solutionn is to have the client leave the computer on 24/7, but it's located in a bedroom so that is not a practical option. Wouuld appreciate your thoughts about resolution of this issue.
The speakers are Altec Lansing - subwoofer and two small desktop speakers from about 4-5 years ago. As suggested in another commment, I will try an alternate set of speakers to see if that makes a difference.
It's very unlikely the speakers make any difference. There are many components which do not "survive" the S3 sleep state well. The best solution is to either (a) leave the system on, but set the hard drives and monitor to shut off after a modest amount of time; (b) use hibernation instead of sleep (this causes all of the BIOS initialization code to run when returning from sleep ... which will resolve this issue); or (c) simply shut the machine off and do a normal reboot.
Yes, hibernation does work, although my client wants the speakers to work in sleep mode, too. Have placed another request to Dell to resolve this issue.
There's little, if anything, they can do if the on-board sound does not "survive" S3 sleep state. You could replace the on-board sound with a sound card that supports S3 ... but be sure to confirm with the manufacturer whether or not a specific card supports the S3 sleep state (many do not). I'd suggest one ... but I'm aware of any cards that I can confidently say work with the S3 state.
This issue remains unresolved. Had another session with Dell tech support a few weeksa ago and they made some additional power setting adjustments and recommended reinstallation of the Dell sound drivers (it appears that a Microsoft driver overwrote the Dell driver during Service Pack 1 installation). Due to client commitments, the Dell sound drivers will be reinstalled on June 25.
As I noted before, there's probably nothing you can do except change the power settings to simply turn off the display and hard drives and to NOT use the sleep state. If the onboard sound doesn't survive S3, there's nothing Dell can do that's going to change that UNLESS the new drivers have a flag that recognizes the system has been in S3 and re-initialize the sound chip (always a possibility => in fact, I've wondered for years why S3 wasn't designed with a standard method for forcing re-initialization for hardware that needed it; this would make the S3 state MUCH more useable).
