HP Pavillion G7 audio not working

[Gr3n]

I have already gone through a whole sort of problems with this laptop already, from shitty case design, to super stiff hinges, to terrible cooling, to broken screens. Now, I have FINALLY gotten everything working for the most part and Macgyvered everything together, and what do you know? The sound don't work anymore. The audio button in the task bar has a red x on it and says "No speakers or headphones are plugged in" (http://prntscr.com/7bq6fi). Umm, I am 100% certain I remembered to plug the speakers in last time I took it apart? Try to plug in headphone? Nope. Nothing. Just says the same thing and doesn't pick them up at all. I open it back up and sure enough the speakers are plugged in properly. I tried turning it back on with them unplugged to see if I could get the headphone working but nope. Eventually I decided to try a USB sound card I had laying around, plugged in my headphones and... HALLELUJAH!!!! I had sound on my youtube video! I finished the video and opened the next one and it would load but the player would not start playing at all. It was obviously loaded though. Unplug USB sound card and refresh and it would play but obviously no sound. I thought maybe the USB sound card was bad so I plugged in a USB bluetooth dongle and connected my bluetooth speaker and it did same thing. I am really interested in what is wrong because it seems like maybe the sound card in the motherboard is fried (or maybe its in the computer speakers inside the case and the cord broke or something) but I am pretty sure something USB would work regardless. Its odd, I can rarely get USB methods to work but its only for like a minute and then after anything that tries to play sound will just not play anything or it will freeze completely. Any help?

 

[Chicano]

Check the Device Manager (right click on computer and select Manage).... the Device Manager may have yellow exclamation signs on the Sound, Video and Game device Controllers, and maybe even on the USB Controllers. On the Sound devices it would mean the Sound drivers is not installed but you should update them anyway. This is to refresh the sound card drivers, while removing troublesome and probably corrupted drivers.

USB devices don't usually need drivers but the USB controllers do.