Why doesn't the sound on my MacBook work?

Could you post a screenshot of your sound settings in System Preferences?

I can’t, I’m lame. When I capture it saves it as .tiff and photobucket won’t upload that. It just says under name “Digital out”, and under type, “built-in output”, and under setting for this device, “the selected device has no output controls.” Also it won’t let me change the volume there either, it’s greyed out.

okay, first of all, you can open the tiff and resave it as a jpeg, yes, if you really want help, you’ll have to work for it

second, did you try a P-RAM Reset? turn it on, then press and hold  + Alt + P + R at the same time, it should turn on again, see i that does anything

Mkay, here is a screen shot of my sound settings.

and did the reset work ? it seems like the mac doesn’t recognize your speakers anymore

Go to Apple Menu -> About This Mac, click on More Info…, click Audio (built-in), and post what it says there.

I did the reset, no change.

Here’s the audio settings.

Thanks for your help guys. :)

look in your headphone port. if you see a red light on it means it is in digital mode. there is a little switch in it that is supposed to only be enabled when a digital device is plugged in. it can be tripped when plugging in some headphones but its not supposed to happen. the way to fix it? plug in and take out a headphone jack a few times. after each time check for the light in the port. if it goes off your good. it will work you just have to keep trying. i had it happen

Nope, I saw that light for a second when I unplugged my headphones, but then it went off and still no sound.

Thanks though.

I think this is one of those quirks of the computer that there is no simple, standard fix to.
However, I did some Googling, and came across this thread at Apple’s forum. If you scroll down a few posts, there’s somebody who is having the exact same problem with their laptop, and they described how they fixed it. You might give that a try, and browse that thread a bit. Good luck.

i have had the same problem too!
it has happened to me quite a few times now. I used to go to disk utility, and repair permission, it worked but it takes a long long time, sometimes i even had to run the procedure more than once.

Above the discussion forum provided by monsoon has a post, he or she put the computer to sleep while headphone set plugged in, while it’s asleep unplug the headphones, strangely this worked. Effortlessly.
good luck

Great answer. I was having the exact same problem – found the red light in the port and just plugged in my headphones in and out a few times – problem solved. Thanks!

same here! it works perfect….

Hi, this happened to me now its awful, i put the computer to sleep for the night and i woke up perfectly with music from my alarm clock and you could hear the song for like 2 minutes and then something happened and the song stopted playing, i thought the alarm went off but then my itunes songs didn’t sound either.
HELP

wow thanks… I was worried At first I saw the red light and thought it was that something was really wrong then I tried to volume up and saw the problem. Found great stuff while trying to fix it. came to this and wow that headphone stuff really worked. Thank you again.

For some reason, I didn’t touch the sound settings for about 3 days and it just changed by itself. I also tried the reseting with the command alt p and r but it doesn’t work. I had this problem before. I pressed this button this time and then it wouldn’t work…. I’m so sad!!!!!! Thx for all your suggestions though

None of these fixes worked for me. The headphones work, but no sound when they are out. Please help!