Help! Headphone/speaker jack stopped working MacBookAir

[Danapple2000]

It just stopped working a day ago.
Internal speakers work, but anything plugged into headphone jack (headphones or external speakers simply won't work).

With any cord plugged into the jack - if I try to raise or lower the volume using the function buttons at the top of the keyboard - I get the typical speaker icon with the 3 waves (popping up on the screen) but instead of the little boxes that fill in as you raise or lower the volume I get a circle with a slash through it. I've never seen that before under the speaker icon.

MacBook Air 2012
OSX Yosemite 10.10.3

I downloaded all available updates.
I baby this computer and never bang it around or drop it.

I could really use some help as I have several things I need to play with sound to my class of 4th graders in the next 2 weeks.

Thanks,
Dan

 

[keysofanxiety]

It just stopped working a day ago.
Internal speakers work, but anything plugged into headphone jack (headphones or external speakers simply won't work).

With any cord plugged into the jack - if I try to raise or lower the volume using the function buttons at the top of the keyboard - I get the typical speaker icon with the 3 waves (popping up on the screen) but instead of the little boxes that fill in as you raise or lower the volume I get a circle with a slash through it. I've never seen that before under the speaker icon.

MacBook Air 2012
OSX Yosemite 10.10.3

I downloaded all available updates.
I baby this computer and never bang it around or drop it.

I could really use some help as I have several things I need to play with sound to my class of 4th graders in the next 2 weeks.

Thanks,
Dan

Hi Dan,

From what you've described it does sound like a hardware issue, with the headphone port not detecting when a jack is plugged in. However you can try a couple of troubleshooting steps which may resolve the issue:

1) Reset SMC. To do this, shut down your MacBook Air. Once it's shut down, press the following 4 keys down at the same time: Shift, Alt, Ctrl (ensure they're all on the left-hand side of the keyboard, not the right-hand side), and the power button. Hold these down for about 5 seconds, then let go. You may see the power cable change its colour - don't worry if it does or doesn't.

2) Reset PRAM. Shut down, then turn back on. As soon as you've pressed the power button to turn it back on, press and hold the following 4 keys: Cmd, Alt, P, R. Continue to hold these four keys down until you hear the Apple 'boot chime' 3 times, then let go.

3) Restart your Mac with 'Reopen windows when logging back in' disabled (there's a one in a trillion chance that there could be some weird background process causing an issue. Worth a try though).

4) Check SSD SMART Data. This will check for corruptions on the SSD. Again, highly unlikely to be causing the problem you're having. Worth a try though. You can download and run SMART Utility here: http://cloudfront.volitans-software.com/smartutility314.zip

4) Verify your volume (worth a shot for the minimum effort). To do this, open Disk Utility (search for it in Spotlight, or go to Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility). Then single-click your volume (typically called Macintosh HD) to highlight it, and then click the 'Verify Disk' option along the right-hand side. If it comes up with red writing, we'll need to repair the disk.

If this doesn't work or none of the above troubleshooting steps identified a problem, I'd suggest it needs a replacement Logic Board. Do you still have AppleCare?

Speak soon.