My i3 Chromebook Was Messing With Me

[RSteve]

I confess, I have several computers; most PCs with older I5 chips. I also have several Chromebooks and an i3 Chromebox. The computer I'm using this minute is the one I use virtually 99% of the time it's a Lenovo Thinkpad 13 Chromebook 13.3" Notebook, Intel Core i3-6100U 2.3GHz Dual-Core, 16GB eMMC SSD, 4GB DDR3, 802.11ac, Bluetooth, ChromeOS. It's wicked fast with an excellent screen. Today, when I plugged in my headphones, NO SOUND. Sound card, headphones, input jack, cable. What went wrong. I checked everything and ultimately figured that the input jack had gone bad. I tested the phones and they were fine. I have a small Altec USB speaker that I connected to see if the sound card was toast. It worked like a charm. What the hell? I was going to order a set of USB headphones, but looked for another solution. I like my phones. I found this at Amazon: TROND External USB Audio Adapter Sound Card with One 3.5mm Aux TRRS Jack for Integrated Audio Out & Microphone in. link You plug it into a USB port and it has a 3.5 mm female for audio and mic and only 10 bucks.
While the USB speaker was playing, I plugged the headphone into the 3.5 mm input jack again and it's working fine now. I have absolutely no idea what happened. I'm not going to cancel the order for the adapter, figuring at some point it'll be handy, just as was the USB speaker, which I'd bought in 2009 and never used until today.

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[Timbo]

The ghost in the machine, working in IT I see it all the time. I presume you'd done the usual turn it off and back on?

 

[RSteve]

I presume you'd done the usual turn it off and back on?

That was #1.
But today, on another computer. It would not turn on. I thought, perhaps, one of my grandchildren has moved the plug from unswitched to switched socket. I flipped on the switch, pressed the on button and the computer fired up. And...the computer was not plugged into the switched socket.