Spin 714 Chromebook sound keeps unmuting itself and going up, somewhat randomly

I'm new to Chromebooks (from decades of Windows) and we just got a Spin 714 (CP714-1WN-560E) less than a week ago. It's fast and everything but one thing confuses me. You can bring down and/or mute the sound all you want but it comes back on by itself and even ramps up to max without any apparent reason. For example, this typically happens when waking from sleep: the sound icon pop ups in the lower right corner and up goes the volume. You bring down/mute it. Then you go surfing on Chrome and at some point as you scroll on a page the sound icon pops up again to repeat the general behavior. Not the end of the world but annoying when one of these autoplay clips starts going at full blast! I don't see much in the way of sound control in the settings. One way out is to plug in headphones of course but I would like to understand if this is ‘normal’ behaviour, some setting I can change, some mysterious behavior driven by an app or a bug? I don't think there are any non-default Google apps installed at this point. The ChromeOS version is 110.0.5481.112. Thanks in advance for any help.

Accepted answers

bvil

Exactly, some flex or something not quite seated properly in the assembly. I went to the store and, since it was just a few days old, they took it back without fuss and ordered me a replacement. For what it's worth, the tech didn't seem too surprised when I described the issue… I didn't actually ask if they get this often though. Hoping that the next one doesn't exhibit this problem, I guess I'll have to declare this question answered!

All comments

Jack22

@bvil

Try to do the below step and check

bvil

Thanks for the suggestion, Jack22, unfortunately the behavior came back after doing this procedure a couple of times. I decided to try the powerwash feature in the settings (and having to go through the basic setup of everything again). After all this I notice that the sound still appears to unmute itself on awakening from sleep but maybe that's an expected behavior? Hopeful news however, the volume seems to stay where it's at for now and the muting stays as well, once engaged. I'm hesitant to say the problem is solved, I'll see if this behavior persists over time. Are there further resources beyond hard reset and powerwash for understanding/fixing things like this?

billsey

There are a couple of keys up near the top right of your keyboard that do volume up and volume down. If one is slightly stuck it would act like that, taking you off mute and raising the volume up to max…

bvil

Very good point. The keys themselves look OK, but now I realize that I can provoke the unmute + volume up behavior just by physically touching or moving the laptop itself, especially pressing (lightly) the underside around the area where the volume keys are… Maybe there's an internal build flaw after all? That would at least help explain the apparent randomness of this behavior. I'll bring it back to the store and have it looked at, now that I may have something concrete to show. Thanks for the insight!

billsey

Anything that woudl allow flexing the case could cause it. There are nine screws holding the case halves together, they are tiny screws going into plastic mounts but you could potentially check to make sure they are all there and snug.

bvil

Exactly, some flex or something not quite seated properly in the assembly. I went to the store and, since it was just a few days old, they took it back without fuss and ordered me a replacement. For what it's worth, the tech didn't seem too surprised when I described the issue… I didn't actually ask if they get this often though. Hoping that the next one doesn't exhibit this problem, I guess I'll have to declare this question answered!