External speakers stopped working

Two days ago the external speakers (cheap Altec Lansing speakers) on my Dell laptop just stopped working. At that time, they were appearing in the device list. But I couldn't get them to work. The built-in speakers in the laptop were working.

That night I restarted the computer to install some Windows updates. After restarting, the external speakers still were not working. Internal speakers are still working. Now the externals don't show at all in the list.

I connected these speakers to another computer and they work fine.

I connected a flash drive to the USB port to which the external speakers were connected to test the port and it works. Unfortunately, I don't have anything handy to test the 3.5m headphone jack. (These are 2-connector speakers, a USB and a 3.5.)

What to do from here? Everything I read says update the driver but these speakers don't use a driver. I'm afraid if I buy new speakers it will be the same problem. Why won't my computer recognize these speakers? I can get by with the built-ins but they are so tinny-sounding.

I'm actually using a hub. The speakers were working fine in this USB port on this hub combined with a headphone jack on the computer. Have been working fine for months. And then the speakers stopped producing sound. The power light is still on on the speakers. You can even hear a faint click from the speakers when you turn them on and off. And the speakers work fine/produce sound on another computer.

There was no update immediately prior to the problem's first occurrence as far as I know. Current build is 19045.3693.

Well, that points to the headphone jack. I was hoping there was a way to pull up a list of the jacks on the computer.

Or maybe somebody has another idea.

I have a pair of headphones, but the plug on these is much larger. Adapter, maybe?

It's difficult to help you because you don't provide much information. Your OS version doesn't matter. Your audio driver version matters.

You don't tell us your dell laptop model, your audio driver version, your external speaker model. Some computer speakers (and headphones) use USB for lights and powers only. They don't send audio out on the USB cable. Some computer speakers send audio out on the USB cable.

You are trying to find the problem by eliminating whether the usb hub is a potential issue. So try plugging your speakers directly into laptop's usb port.

What your dell audio app or dell optimizer app or waves maxxaudio pro app say about your audio output jack --- is it "line out", "speaker out" or "headphone out".

I selected headphones as the output device and the speakers worked. I didn't do this before because I didn't want headphones as the output device, I wanted speakers.

But why was this suddenly necessary?

Berton said:

If one plugs a audio cord from a simple pair of speakers into the front jack/port it cuts out the rear port but otherwise the computer doesn't care which type, headset or speakers. The software for the sound adapter usually does care hence the pop-up message.

If Dell gives you a choice, you have to select "line out" instead of "headphone".

Line out is a much lower power signal than headphone out. When you select "headphone out", the computer turns on the headphone amp inside the Realtek audio chip. So if you plug in your headphones and select "line out", you get a much quieter audio signal than the headphones expected. If you plug in your speakers and select "headphone out", you get a much stronger audio signal than the speakers expected --- and you may clip your audio signal and makes audio sound very bad.

They didn't ask you this question just to annoy you.

This problem first occurred without my doing anything.