Hi all, I have a very odd problem with the sound on my laptop, I have tried so many things to fix it but its still an issue!

The problem with my laptop (Toshiba Satellite L750) is that the sound randomly cuts out, for example when watching a YouTube video the sound may cut out after a few minutes (or it may take as long as ten minutes) but the video keeps plying. To get the sound going again I have to pause the video, rewind the video a fraction by dragging the time bar back and then clicking play, or alternatively I can plug in my headphones and unplug them again, the sound will then work for another short or long time before stopping again. This happens on Firefox, internet explorer and even “popcorn time” (a bit torrent streaming program) and possibly other programs also.

To try and fix this I have done the following: Completely reinstalled windows (wiping my hard drive of everything except it’s out of box software), Updated Firefox and Internet Explorer, performed all windows updates, updated flash and I have even rolled back the updates one the audio drivers to see if that would fix it, which did not, so I have updated the drivers again. I have also installed the latest version of Java, although I am not sure that is relevant.

The only other thing I could think of which may be causing the problem after reading online about people having the same problem is that perhaps the headphone jack is dirty and the computer thinks there is head phones plugged in intermit idly, so I have cleaned the headphone jack the best I can with a Q-Tip but the sound still cuts out during video play. I have also tried to disable the headphone jack and tested again and still had the sound problem. Interestingly after doing this I have found that when the sound stops if I put a Q Tip in the headphone jack the sound works again, and then when the Q Tip is left in the jack the sound will stop working again after a while and then removing the Q Tip restores the sound again temporarily. I am not sure if the headphone jack has been properly cleaned out though, although if this were the cause of the problem I do not think rewinding the video to get the sound back would work every time like it does now?

After trying all those things, I am not sure what to do next to fix the problem permanently? My next step is to take it into PB Tech for repair (they have a 20% voucher in the entertainment book), but if there are other things I could try to fix it myself for free that would be much better :)