Hi everyone,

I'm new to your community, though I have visited here often over the years to get technical help with Windows.

There are so many helpful posts from members of this website, that yours was the first place (outside of my laptop's manufacture) I wanted to consult regarding my issue. (When I registered, I tried to provide you with as much information about my laptop as possible.)

I know this is rather lengthy, but please bear with me. I've been dealing with this problem every day for over 3 weeks and I'm at my wit's end.

I bought my first HP laptop at no cheap price, however, the sound from the speakers was very low.

Even with the volume slider at 100%, the dialogue from a DVD or video file was barely audible, while under my headset the volume would be too loud at the 25% level.

The warranty on the laptop had just ran out when I bought it from a reputable dealer, who had tried to help me with low volume as well.

You can't get technical help from HP on the phone, unless you're under warranty, so I interacted with one of their techies at their forum.

The HP guy gave me general recommendations, which I had already done on my own and from the guy who sold the laptop to me. (The seller even had me to completely reset the system, which I did.)

My soundcard is Realtek High Definition Audio, and the default version is 6.0.1.8264

The Realtek version at the HP website for my particular laptop is: 6.0.1.8117

The latest version on the Realtek website is: 6.0.1.8286

I've seen on your website, how you discuss the various Realtek High Definition Audio drivers, and I'm hoping you can guide me to one that would be better than the ones I've been trying to use.

By the way, I have a disability that requires I use dictation software to operate the computer, so I use Dragon NaturallySpeaking.

DNS (and headset) work great with my default driver, but the speakers are barely audible.

The Realtek driver for my particular laptop at the HP website, not only has low speaker sound, it doesn't even play the audio in stereo.

The latest driver at the Realtek website, however, does play the sound from the speakers a tiny bit louder, but not enough to be an acceptable listening level.

One driver makes the sound output, "Speaker/Headphone" and another driver makes the sound output, "Speaker." So I'm confused as to which type of driver I should be using.

I have done so much installing and uninstalling of these drivers, that I'm now worried that my registry is going to start messing up.

Any assistance you can give me is greatly appreciated.