Sara, There is a utility, which I can't find at the moment, priced under $20, which will store all the appropriate configuration settings for your system audio (including which audio device to be used, the volume level, and that it's unmuted), and restore everything to a named state (such as "default" if you set that up). you could buy it and have it run at boot time, or have it triggered by a hotkey. It has both a GUI and a commandline interface.
I've got the info at home because I was sometimes having such troubles on my vista pc, when it would set things so that it was using the incorrect audio device. even a keyboard with volume and mute keys, such as mine has, is of no use if windows is talking to the wrong audio device. When I find it I'll post it here if there's any interest. In my opinion, it's the kind of function any screen reader product which uses speech should have built in. We were just discussing this on the blind vista list. Chip I'm going to buy this utility. ------------------------------ Chip Orange Database Administrator Florida Public Service Commission [email protected] (850) 413-6314 (Any opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Florida Public Service Commission.) > -----Original Message----- > From: Sara [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Sunday, February 15, 2009 12:45 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: I love my braille display! > > I have a braille display which I often forget I have. > It's not even a year old and I already shove it around my > desk like it's unimportant. > Well today it saved my computer. > To make a long story short I had no sound and the sighted > help didn't want to stay up all night helping me install a > new virtual machine. > We decided I had no sound and we'll fix it in the morning; I > didn't want to stay up all night either! > So I was moping around wondering what to try when I suddenly > remembered that braille display. > I thought might as well test it. > I fired up the soundless VM and waited until WE loaded or I > hoped it loaded. I then plugged the display in and it was > recognized. I went to the WE control panel, selected the > display, and had quote sound end quote. > I checked the volume control and found the reason I had no > sound. A misbehaving program must have turned it all the way > to zero. I pushed the slider up to 100 and I had sound. > No long nights of using sighted help to get sound back; just > ten minutes with my dear braille display. > Next time you have no sound, remember your braille display if > you have one. > -- > Sara > Please join my Access mailing list at: > http://nightwind.info/mailman/listinfo/access_nightwind.info > > > If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original > sender only. If your reply would benefit others on the list and > your message is related to GW Micro, then please consider sending > your message to [email protected] so the entire list will > receive it. > > All GW-Info messages are archived at > http://www.gwmicro.com/gwinfo, and can be searched through > and sorted using the search > form at the bottom of the page. > > If you wish to unsubscribe from this list, send a message to > [email protected] and include leave gw-info in the body > of the message. > If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original sender only. If your reply would benefit others on the list and your message is related to GW Micro, then please consider sending your message to [email protected] so the entire list will receive it. All GW-Info messages are archived at http://www.gwmicro.com/gwinfo, and can be searched through and sorted using the search form at the bottom of the page. If you wish to unsubscribe from this list, send a message to [email protected] and include leave gw-info in the body of the message.
