The sound on my laptop stopped working altogether for some reason a few days ago. When I turn the volume up full it makes this crackling sound kinda like what you hear in the cinema before the sound starts. I plugged some earphones into the laptop but they don't work either. What could cause both the internal speaker and the earphone output to stop working altogether? I'm on Ubuntu but I didn't touch any of the audio preferences and this crackling sound indicates a hardware problem.

1. the thing is that when u plug ur earphones, there is a pin inside the 3.5 mm plug which disconnect the speakers. if that pin get fucked, u ll never have sound on ur speakers again. but that should not influence on the sound in the headphones.

2. update driver + codec

3. use any live cd linux distro to check the sound. maybe be the issue is in ur OS...