Apart from the obvious things like making sure the volume isn't muted both in windows and physically on the system (if it has a hardware volume control) it is possible that the driver for your audio card may need to be updated. You should go to Control Panel and then Device Manager, click on audio and see if there is any yellow circles with exclamation marks in it. If so, this is an indication that you are missing the audio drivers for your sound card. To fix this, the first option and easiest will be to run microsoft update. When doing this, make sure you choose all updates, even optional ones, as this includes hardware updates. If this does not work, go to the dell website directly and punch in your service tag number to find the proper audio driver and install it on your system.
Answers & Comments
Apart from the obvious things like making sure the volume isn't muted both in windows and physically on the system (if it has a hardware volume control) it is possible that the driver for your audio card may need to be updated. You should go to Control Panel and then Device Manager, click on audio and see if there is any yellow circles with exclamation marks in it. If so, this is an indication that you are missing the audio drivers for your sound card. To fix this, the first option and easiest will be to run microsoft update. When doing this, make sure you choose all updates, even optional ones, as this includes hardware updates. If this does not work, go to the dell website directly and punch in your service tag number to find the proper audio driver and install it on your system.
Good Luck,
NOLA Tech