Sound card suddenly stopped?

My sister said that as she was listening to music, the sound suddenly stopped. I checked all my speaker wiring and I'm wondering:

Is there a way to tell whether it's my speakers or my sound card that died?

first thing is to try different speakers of course. if they work then you know your speakers went poof! if they do not work then it could be your soundcard (hardware) of drivers (software).

if so, try to run dxdiag from the run menu (sorry this if your using microsoft based os). then go to the sound tab. you'll see a slider with a caption "Hardware acceleration". try sliding this all the way to the left: that is "No acceleration". restart and check if it works...

btw, let the forum know what typoe of sound card youve got. you can also find this info on that same "sound" tab in dxdiag.

if it works without, hardware acceleration. you can either leave it this way as a last resort or try the following:. get your sound driver disk, reinstall your soun drivers and then reinstall the latest available version of directx. restart and try out the sound.

regards
dve83

I have a very similar situation....
my sister was listening to music and suddenly...no sound....
I've tested the speekers else where - they're good
Sound card is in good working order, all drivers and everything else is there.....

...anyone got any ideas of what it could be ?