Hi All,

Is there a quick way to unmute the speakers in Windows? I'm running 
Windows 8.1, so that's what I'm interested in, but I'm willing to try 
things that work in other versions.

I had a very cranky moment with a campus IT tech this week. I normally 
hook my laptop to the classroom projector using a serial cable that's 
already waiting for me. With this setup, I can type examples and so on 
as I lecture. The short version of the story is that the cable was not 
there when I got to class, so I called a tech to bring it back. He did, 
but he couldn't get my laptop to communicate with the projector, so he 
started messing with stuff. Since all of this took a very long time, I 
dragged class announcements out as long as I could. Then I started 
lecturing, so I was only half listening to what the tech was doing. 
About thirty minutes in, I heard that Jaws was no longer speaking, but I 
didn't panic because he was doing something to the computer that's 
already in the room. When he gave up, we had a mini-tiff. He thought I 
should just use the computer in the room, which is what it was there 
for. I suppose I should be flattered that he didn't know I was blind 
until I mentioned it. My students certainly found his reaction amusing. 
Anyway, he fiddled with things a few more minutes, gave up again, and left.

When I got home, I turned on my laptop and got silence. Initially, I 
thought it was having some sort of Windows meltdown, but when I got 
sighted help, I discovered the tech had muted the speakers, so the 
person helping me had to go into the charms menu, select Settings, 
select Volume, and click Unmute. Afterward, I tried going through the 
steps myself, but since there's no first-letter navigation in the charms 
menu or in the part of the control panel where volume is, the process 
isn't something I can really memorize and tuck into my brain somewhere.

Is there a mute/unmute shortcut or toggle, or is there a utility or 
program I can use for this?

Thanks.

Ciao


    VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
Archived on the World Wide Web at
    http://listserv.icors.org/archives/vicug-l.html
    Signoff: [log in to unmask]
    Subscribe: [log in to unmask]