Hi, I wasn't going to weigh in on this volume control thing as it probably is fouled up from so much advice, some of it good and some of it not so good. The "Sticky keys" sounds come from the PC speaker. The best way to get out of narrator is alt plus F4 because tabbing around to the taskbar and trying to use a menu is not a sure thing once you've opened a few windows, the WindowsKeyPlusU keystroke opens one window for Utility Manager and another for Narrator.
I know it sounds dumb but I've seen and done stranger things. First make sure your speakers didn't get plugged into the wrong port. I've taken support calls from people who had cords unplugged for every device you can imagine and this does not make you dumb, just human. I won't enumerate my various blunders over the last 15Plus years of computerdom. Ok, you need to turn your speakers up loud to first see if the volume is muted. Type WindowsKeyPlusR to bring up the startmenu's run dialog and type SNDVOL32 and then press enter to open Volume Control. The command is different for Vista and is SNDVOL. Wait a while before you start tabbing to give the window a chance to open and gain focus. Otherwise tabbing will do something else unpredictable like move you around from desktop to taskbar, or maybe nothing. Tab twice here to get to the first mute control, it could be called "mute all" or a few other things depending on your sound card. Here is where you grab your speakers' volume control and turn 'em up nice and loud and press the spacebar to unmute the volume. If you don't hear any difference there is one more mute to try. If you heard the hiss in your sound card come on then shift tab to the volume slider and turn it up loud with the home key which is either the top middle key on the six-pack if you're using a standard desktop keyboard or the seven on the numpad. If you're on a laptop and don't know where to find these keys, just uparrow a brazilion times and I do mean lots! Hey if this worked you're done, other than setting things to your liking and following the recommendations for a download at the end of this message which can keep this kind of thing from tying you up again. Let's assume now that fiddling with the first mute did nothing. Tabbing 3 or four more times puts you on another mute control. I say three or 4 because if you have a soundcard with advanced properties and have them checked in the Volume Control's options menu then you'd need to press tab four times because you have an extra control there to tab beyond. Let's press tab three times and asume for now you have no advanced controls. Turn up those speakers and press space here until you hear the soundcard's white noise or hiss. If pressing space on this mute made a difference then stay with the hissiest of the two settings you are toggling with space since that means you unmuted something with the spacebar. If that doesn't work, press escape in case you were on the advanced button instead of the mute; there is no way to know for sure. We don't want to try out your treble and bass controls with no sound and escape will cloase that Advanced dialog if we accidentally opened it. tab again and and assume you got to the second mute and press the spacebar. If you actually got hiss, continue on, otherwise the rest of this is probably a waste of your time. Since you unmuted things and have no speech, your volume got turned down somehow but we're halfway there by getting to be able to hear the lovely hiss from your sound card. You should be on a mute control here, shift plus tab to it's corresponding volume slider and press page up a few times or uparrow for a long long time. If this didn't give you sound, shift tab again and press page up a couple times. Don't hit the spacebar along the way as we like that unmuted noise you found. Page up gives you a 20 percent raise in volume so two presses of the page up key should be plenty to get speech back to start with. Continually pressing shift plus tab followed by a couple page up's should get you sound/. The worst damage we've perhaps done along the way (because we're all lost in the maze of your invisible sound card) is to overbalance your speakers to one side or the other by pressing page up in the balance control instead of the volume slider. You of course will fix that once you get speech back. If you repeat the shift tab keystroke followed by a couple page up's enough times you'll be back where you started when you opened volume control and should have speech. Tab through the volume control and set things to your liking. Pageup, well you sure know what that does - twenty-percent; up and down or right and left arrow keys move the sliders in baby steps and home gives you full volume but on the balance control that keystroke will move you completely to one ear or the other. The end key is not your friend in here as it takes a volume slider all the way to the bottom. Now go get a copy of Quickmix. You can find it at: http://www.jfwlite.com/QuickMixIn.EXE install the program , go into volume control and adjust your volume control like you want it, open quickmix and save the configuration and put the saved file or a shortcut to the preset it created in your startMenu's startup group. Then if you get muted again or turn something all the way down by mistake you just need to restart your machine and login if need be and the shortcut you put in startup will automatically set the volume control to the config you created with Quickmix. I hope you have speech now, some of these fancier keyboards and laptops have mute keys or combinations that mute things in odd places. Jon Visit the JAWS Users List home page at: http://www.jaws-users.com Visit the Blind Computing home page at: http://www.blind-computing.com Address for the list archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to [email protected] For help from Mailman with your account Put the word help in the subject or body of a blank message to: [email protected] Use the following address in order to contact the management team [email protected] If you wish to join the JAWS Users List send a blank email to the following address: [email protected]
