So,

As of yesterday the sound has stopped working with my earphones on the laptop. Checked it with 2 setws of heaphones and still the same.

Sound works through the laptop speakers but thats not really doable for office work.

Checked all volum settings and can't really find anything. Checked my media players to see if the mute is on but no joy.

Runing out of ideas now.

Any thoughts?

its XP Pro

Cheers

Is the jack socket knackered, or a connection gone somewhere? Sounds hardware more than software if you've gone through everything on Windows.

Dont think it is. Still fits in like a gnats chuff

When you put your earphones in a laptop the sound will stop going through the speakers and will instead go through the earphones. Try listening to your earphones and you should hear again or take your headphones out and listen through the speakers.

Go to control panel and double click "sound".
Check that the headphone has not been disabled or turned off.

Have you tried putting the little round bits at the end of the wires into your ears

Tried all of the above even AK informative suggestion

Still for the life of me can't figure what has happened. In the CP and Sounds i have the Headphones selected but still nothing.

I'll have another go today and update if I figure it

This may sound daft but are you definitely plugging into the earphone port and not the microphone port. It's easy to lose track of which is which unless they are clearly marked, likewise if you have two headphone ports - have you tried both.

Check your default sound scheme setting under control panel -> sound. Recently had an update from something at work that caused a few sound issues on some of our PC's by setting the default sound scheme to nothing (ie no sound).

Have you tried plugging in your headphones and whilst listening to them gently move the headphone jack up/down/left/right. If they suddenly burst into sound then the jack wiring has probably come loose.

Check for residual power issues too - these are quite common on laptops. Shutdown, unplug the power cord, remove the battery then press and hold the power-on button for about 20 seconds. Put the battery back, start up and then plug the power cord in again. Usual symptoms though are keyboard not working properly, led's lit when they shouldn't be or laptop will not start at all.