Need Advice lousy sound

I've got a 2 (or maybe 3, I forget) year old Dell PC. One day the sound sounded poor, all crackly and distorted. The first thing I tried was to replace the speakers (probably a mistake in hindsight). The sound quality didn't change at all, so that was not the issue. Then I tried loading a new driver for the sound card, but there was no change. Finally I decided to try a new sound card. I went on the Dell website to let it point me towards a card that would be compatible with my exact computer. The only card it offered was a refurbished card, and there was essentially no description at all. I bought it, and it came with no instructions. I took out the old card and installed the new, and now I have no sound at all.

I had a hunch that the sound card would solve the problem. About 4 months ago the PC would not power up at all. It was under warranty and Dell replaced the motherboard and power supply. About a month later, it would not boot up and gave an error indicator saying the RAM was bad. I replaced the RAM and that fixed the problem. So I have a hunch that the computer got zapped or something, and all the HW components are going bad.

Any suggestions?

 

If you have no sound at all with the new card, it might be different than the old one and need new drivers.

Right click on My Computer and hit the Hardware tab. Then click Device Manager.

Any unknown or ? devices showing up? if not, try right clicking on your computer ID at the very top and selecting the Scan for hardware changes.

 

could be a bad 3.5mm plug going into your sound card or a faulty port. try headphones.. geesh dell sounds bad in this thread did you buy the computer refurbished?
another thing to try it go into windows in safemode, probly wont make much of a difference but try to do that, (constantly hit f8 after cmos bootup and before windows loading screen)