I'm hoping someone has seen something like this before and can help me out.

I am refurbing an older computer for my mom. It's a Compaq Deskpro EN with the basics (PIII/750ish, 128 MB RAM, CDROM, onboard sound). It's running fully updated Win2000 SP4 and it runs pretty well.

The sound through the PC speaker or the line out is LOUD. The volume control in the toolbar does nothing - not even muting works. I finally unplugged the internal PC speaker to shut it up. I would like to have sound, but not at that volume. I don't need anything fancy.

Any idea what might be going on or what to do about it?

Do you think a new PCI sound card with speakers would solve the problem?

Thanks,
Pam

If you mean you tried to adjust the sound through the speaker icon in the taskbar (lower right part), try double clicking on it to bring up multiple volume controls. Or you could right click on it and click "Open Volume Controls" to do the same. See if any of those helps.

Mailpup makes a good point.
If that dosent work, maybe you should try using an external volume knob like this one , or make one yourself, like this.
Anyways, I hope you do find the solution.

Hey, I know probably no-one even remembers this threads existance but I had the same problem, my pc specs are:

2 x 3.2 GHz Amd64 processor
2Gb DDR2 Ram
Nvidia 7900GT
Built in HD audio

but I've stumbled across the solution and thought I might share it in case anyone happens to browse this link.

If your having this sort of problem theres a chance you may have an audio driver called SoundMAX, this is the source of the problem. If SoundMAX's drivers are damaged in any way you will have these exact symptoms mentioned above.

To fix this you need to re-install the audio drivers from the disk provided with your motherboard.
Alternatively, you can look at their website - http://www.soundmax.com/ but the site is poorly laid out and it's hard to find what your looking for. You need the software, not the drivers, those should be installed afterwards.

I hope that helps and if anyone can find a better place for downloads please post it, thanks. John