Speakers

[Johnny_B80]

Hi everyone, after a couple of years of having nothing but a pair of headphones for my desktop, I decided to buy some Logitech S-220 speakers. After plugging them into the soundcard jack (A SB X-Fi XtremeMusic) and making all the connections, I realized that there was no sound. So I tried reinserting the speaker jack, but as soon as I touched it my computer made a weird noise and bluescreened. Upon rebooting, it failed to recognize the sound card (said something like "multimedia audio device - driver not found".)

Out of sheer stubbornness or perhaps stupidity, I decided to try again, this time with the onboard audio. This actually worked for a while, but eventually the sound stopped again. Wiggled the jack, at which point the computer shut down and refused to boot.

Panicked a little bit, unplugged everything, checked the insides to see if anything smelled like burning, everything looked ok. So now the computer's working again (including the sound card, somehow) but I'm definitely not connecting those speakers again. Anyone have something similar happen or knows what could cause this? Thanks.

[Bruallord]

In the future, when unplugging or plugging in any audio equipment to your soundcard, make sure your speakers are turned off and/or unplugged.  While on, they can carry a charge along the audio wires.  It would have saved you the headache of having a power surge arc thru your speaker inputs into/from your computer.  It also might be a good idea to next time have your computer off as well when connecting your speakers.