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My MacBook Pro is claiming it has no sound output devices available, neither the line-in nor built-in speakers.

Sound isn't playing on startup or any other time.

I'm not seeing the red glow from the headphone jack that I've seen mentioned in certain cases of this failure. Though I have noticed an awful lot of cases that at least sound like mine (sudden blanket audio failure.)

Any thoughts on how to move forward with this one? (Am currently working through this troubleshooting checklist: http://www.hightechdad.com/2011/02/10/no-output-audio-devices-suddenly-on-your-apple-macbook-macbook-pro-or-macbook-air-try-these-7-fixes/) Please let me know if this isn't the appropriate stack for this.

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  • What does it say under the "Audio" section in System Profiler? If nothing, try booting with your restore DVD and open System Profiler on that and check that.
    – Kyle Cronin
    Commented May 22, 2011 at 21:09
  • I assume you've tried the usual restart?
    – Nathan Greenstein
    Commented May 22, 2011 at 23:12
  • I would boot from the restore disc and run an apple hardware test. This can be done by holding down the 'D' key while booting the DVD. You can fine more info about it here: support.apple.com/kb/ht1509
    – Digitalchild
    Commented May 23, 2011 at 2:40
  • It appears I don't have enough rep to comment, please treat it as such. A while back I plugged my earphones in my laptop and when I took them out the laptop wouldn't play any sounds, it still believed the earphones to be plugged in. Although your situation is different, the omnipotent apple genii might be inclined to fix/replace some hardware (assuming usefulness of such), as they did for me for free. It would be nice if the mac came with a way to manually pick where the sound comes out from, instead automatically detecting and deciding the best output.
    – donkey kong
    Commented Aug 30, 2011 at 22:50

1 Answer 1

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I have no idea if this will even work, but it's worth a try.

  1. Download Virtualbox.
  2. Download Ubuntu and install it in Virtualbox.
  3. Check the sound preferences in Ubuntu and see if any audio devices show up.

Let me know if you need help with any of these steps. If you are able to get an audio device, more than likely, there's a problem with your install of OS X.

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    That's a rather complicated diagnostic procedure. Clever, but I suspect booting from the install disc to run a hardware test would be easier and cleaner.
    – Daniel ♦
    Commented Sep 30, 2011 at 3:39
  • @Daniel It's all I could think of, but try the hardware test too. I don't recall if it test sound, but it won't hurt.
    – daviesgeek
    Commented Sep 30, 2011 at 16:16
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    I doubt this would work. What Virtualbox sees is what the host OS reports. Since Mac OS X doesn't see the device, it won't report anything to Ubuntu running on top of it.
    – houbysoft
    Commented Dec 29, 2011 at 4:12

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