How can I get my Acer Aspire to stop muting itself?

Scorpion1

Turn laptop on, volume goes down to mute. "Sound" and "speakers" settings do nothing. FN F8 has no effect. Uninstalled drivers, and rebooted. No change. Did clean boot. No change. Did recovery. No change. BIOS says everything is fine. Mobility bar stays stuck down. Nothing I can find in mute. If I tap on the up volume key, the speakers play. When I let it go, straight back down to zero (mute). Using on-board speakers only, but it is the same when i plug in headsets. Five or six "experts" cannot find the problem. I'm way past the basics. Any ideas?

Easwar

Hi Scorpion1,

May I know the full model name of your unit.

billsey

Any chance the volume down key is sticking? That could give that symptom...

Scorpion1

This is an Acer Aspire R11, bought in 2015 new, came with W10 loaded. Everything is updated. Never had a single problem til last week. No matter what device I put as "default", the result is the same. Volume keys are not stuck. Checked the entire keyboard for stuck keys, cleaned it, etc...very curious why FN F8 does nothing. All other FN keys work fine. When I open "volume mixer", any and all programs open (such as Chrome, system, headsets or ext speakers) ar at zero volume. IF I hit the volume up arrow, it goes up, but fights it the whole time (meaning, to me, something is telling it to go to mute). When I stop with the volume up, it goes straight to zero. As I mentioned, to make it easier on suggestions, I've; uninstalled drivers, uninstalled HD Audio Manager, uninstalled EVERYTHING dealing with sound, and reinstalled lates and newest (except HD AM, which was suggested to use an older one, as the newest has been said to have problems in W10.) Maybe it is just, plain my onboard sound card is bad now, but no way for me to check it out. The "Audio T/S'er" that everyone tells me to use says everything is fine.
I really need some kind of hard audio t/s'er that actually checks to see if the sound card is good or not. I've tried a dozen times on line to find one, but all they keep going back to is using an audio checker that only checks for sound or system problems. That's not good enough. 

Easwar

Hi Scorpion1,

# Try to get the BIOS page.

1. Turn OFF the unit.

​2. Press and hold the F2 key and turn on the unit. 
3. You will be in setup utility page. 
4. Once you got the screen release the F2 key.
5. Tap on F9 key and hit enter key without changing the option.
6. Tap on F10 key and hit enter key without changing the option.
7. Your unit will restart by itself. 

Check this T/S and post the result. ​

Scorpion1

Tks for your suggestion, but I've done the BIOS thing twice already. No change. As I mentioned, I'm way past the basic stuff, and a lot of the mid-level stuff, too. 

Scorpion1

Also, I have no "storage sense" option under Storage. Maybe laptop is too old (6yrs). Is there a way for me to get/enable storage sense, as my  c: is full of frag files that will not clear. I have used disk cleanup, CCleaner, Defraggler, and others, but it does not clear the 8GB of frag'd files. I am now getting "low disk space" warning, although I have nothing I can delete.