Question old Toshiba U 305 laptop

[alabt]

I have an old Toshiba U 305 S 7448 laptop. It works, yes it is slow, but it works. Not my main PC . . . it worked until last week when suddenly I now get no audio. There is a X on the Audio Icon lower right of screen. It runs Windows 7 Ultimate.
I can't see any audio indications in setup modes, when I do it shows NO DRIVERS and/or NO AUDIO DEVICE INSTALLED . . . the usual stuff you'd see in setup for Audio either doesn't show or when it does is incorrect, all related to Audio. I tried to reload the audio driver from Toshiba's website but it seems to not want to load. I occasionally get a NO AUDIO DEVICE found when trying to load driver. I am thinking the audio part of the motherboard has an issue . . . if I opened it up, any obvious things to look for on the motherboard, like dirty contacts on a connector, etc.
Can I "just for the fun of it" use a USB audio stick to get audio that way ??? If I can will that USB audio come out of the laptops speakers or will I have to use external speakers. The audio USB sticks I've seen look reasonably priced.
Everything else on the PC works good.

Al

 

[alabt]

I recently did a different check of audio drivers and this software used this time said, INSTALL AUDIO CARD . . . so it looks like it is not seeing the audio circuit, I guess that the audio part of motherboard is "bad". To my original question . . . if no ideas on how to fix the problem, let's talk about the external USB audio idea . . . does anybody know if I use an inexpensive audio USB, if the audio will need external speakers, which I have or will the laptop speakers still work ? You might ask, why bother, its a very old PC ? Yes your correct but I just like messing with "old stuff".
Al