Sudden loss of playback sound

[PLecso]

I have been using Audacity for several months without difficulty on my Dell computer running Windows Vista. Recently I clicked on the speaker icon in the mixer toolbar by accident, setting it to zero. I lost all playback sound but since then I can't get any playback sound out of the Audacity program. The I/O is set to my Realtek speakers (as usual). I tried selecting the Microsoft Sound Mapper but still no sound on playback. In Vista there is no soundcard access through the Audacity program. I removed the old Audacity program from my computer thinking perhaps something had become corrupted. I re-installed Audacity but I still have no sound on playback. Any suggestions?

[richardash1981]

Have you checked the settings in the Windows volume control? It sounds like you have muted the main output in there, and need to un-mute it.

[PLecso]

The volume on the computer system is fine. The media players all work as well as all the sound effects. I tried bypassing the speakers using headphones but that did not work even swithing to the Microsoft Sound Map and headphones did not work. I am truly stumped why I can't get any playback sound. Maybe if I remove the stable Audacity and switch to the Beta-Audacity. Any opinions?

[richardash1981]

Sorry you "Lost all playback sound" but "The media players all work as well as all the sound effects"? You are contradicting yourself and make no sense.

Do you mean that you don't get sound from audacity but do from other programs? If that is the case, then you need to check that the playback level slider in audacity (the one next to the speaker icon) is turned up. Are you sure there is anything in audacity to play back? If you open a new project, do Generate > Tone and then press play, do you hear anything?

[PLecso]

Sorry you "Lost all playback sound" but "The media players all work as well as all the sound effects"? You are contradicting yourself and make no sense.

Do you mean that you don't get sound from audacity but do from other programs? If that is the case, then you need to check that the playback level slider in audacity (the one next to the speaker icon) is turned up. Are you sure there is anything in audacity to play back? If you open a new project, do Generate > Tone and then press play, do you hear anything?

Yes, I have lost the playback sound in Audacity but all the other sound functions on the computer are working fine. The playback level slider is set on the maximum. I have multiple albums of data that I have been working on and none of them have any sound in Audacity on playback. I know this sounds crazy but this is what is happening.
I opened a New Project, I generated a tone and on play there is no audible sound although the green L & R channels show that there is plenty of data.
Phil

[steve]

In Audacity, go to "Edit->Preferences->Audio I/O" and set Playback to Microsoft Sound Mapper.