Often we see the websites where flash elements are playing music but the mute button is missing. One very annoying example is a True Move Customer Care Chat. You can go crazy while waiting in the queue for half an hour if you listen to this music from their online game (it supposed to entertain you while you are waiting). Of course you can mute the sound on your computer completely, but this means in these 30 minutes you cannot listen music, talk on Skype etc.

There is a solution for such sites for Google Chrome: Google Toolbox extension. It allows you to mute the sound on all tabs from it’s menu.

Computer with a problem: HP Pavilion dv5227tx (I believe the solution is applicable to many dv5000 series laptops).

Sound device: Vendor ID 14F1, Device ID 5047

Windows 7 installs the driver but it is unable to start.
Downloaded sp35682 from HP Support site, this is a driver version 3.38.0.50 dated 03/26/2007.
Unpacked it and pointed the Driver Installation Wizard to the unpacked folder.
Driver installed fine but there were no sound from the speakers.
There was sound through the headphones.

I compared the registry settings from the original XP installation with the current ones.

The following key attracted my attention:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E96C-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0007\Settings\OEM\DefaultJack]

I changed some keys back to the values they had on XP as follows:

“Wid13″=hex:01,02,01,00
“Wid14″=hex:02,00,01,00
“Wid15″=hex:0a,01,01,00
“Wid17″=hex:0a,01,00,00
“Wid1D”=hex:01,02,00,00

Restarted and bingo! Sound through the speakers!

• Download driver from VIA website, unpack
• Navigate to Vinyl\drivers\Vista32WDM or Vinyl\drivers\Vista64WDM, open Vinyl97.inf for editing
• Add the following line between the others:
  %*WDM_VIAudio.DeviceDesc%=WDM_VIAudio, PCI\VEN_1106&DEV_3059&SUBSYS_810D1043
• Save, point the driver installation from Device Manager to this folder
• Plug the speakers into the microphone (pink) jack