Snow Leopard - No Output devices found - (Audio) Help?

I'm an Air owner and have the same problem: no sound output devices available despite prefs delete, system re-install etc. Hoping for a fix in 10.6.2 or my Air might have to go on a holiday to Apple Repair World...

Other MBA owners out there who had audio go out all of a sudden with a Snow Leopard upgrade? If so please "document" your situation for prosperity.

There's no definite fix/answer in this thread yet, but it's good to commiserate as several of us wait for the 10.6.2 update to see what happens.

In my particular case, I also have some other issues that make troubleshooting difficult, ie. is it a hardware failure with the sound chip/cable running to it. It is also a big challenge to re-install my old system via my SuperDrive and now glitchy TimeMachine.

To make a long story short, while I still am using my MBA, it has become a "desktop" and I bought a small $200 netbook that magically can run Skype, has sound, is small and portable and doesn't overheat. Maybe "The times have already changed."

I just got my macmini back from the Geniuses and they "re-seated" a bunch of cables and now it's working again.

So it looks like my problem was hardware based.

Good luck to all facing this same problem.

I am having the same problem. This must be software again as i had this issue with G5 iMac which was resolved by a new update.

Any idea on when 10.6.2 will be available ?

Hello
Did anyone fix this issue yet ?
I spent entire two days researching and it seems like there is two similar issues for many people.
Some people lost their audio but they can still hear the start up sound, but no sound afterwards.
This is because an update screw up your sound controls probably.
Do not worry, this is not a hardware issue as you can hear the sound once you power your mac.
A lot of people fixed that issue by playing around with sound settings in the pref Panel.

Another issue for other people ( just like myself )
No startup sound, no output devices shown. No nothing. Seems like driver does not exist.
When you try to turn the volume up, the logo is grayed out and under the volume there is some sort of a STOP icon. Nothing is working when you try to fix this.
I was on 10.5.8 and my sound was working perfectly.
Then i switched to Snow Leopard and it worked for a few days until i put my Mac to sleep and the next day i realized I had this issue.
Upgrading to 10.6.1 did not help ( i am actually not sure if this happened before or after upgrade )

Playing around, resetting everything did not work.
Reinstalling did not work. Last night i downgraded to 10.5 and then installed combo update, it did not work.

So lets see ...
Apple said its my hardware, and if everyone of us has a hardware issue at the same time well .. that could be it.
But i would give 10% for a sound to fail overnight when my mac is asleep.
If it was RAM, HD, Screen ( Dead Pixels ) I would have an easier understanding of this ...

I give up on trying to find the answer as i will take my mac to service and let them deal with it.

One thing i did not do is to reset entire firmware to default but unfortunately none of the ones on apple website ( Firmware 1.4 - 1.7 ) are for iMac 8,1.

Anyone else has other ideas ?
I tried removing Audio files etc. Nothing.

=)
Thank you

Same here. Clean install on a Mac Mini 1.66 Intel Core Duo. No output devices in Systems Prefs.

Model Name: Mac mini
Model Identifier: Macmini1,1
Processor Name: Intel Core Duo
Processor Speed: 1.66 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 2 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz

Message was edited by: dwcasey

Fixed my audio on the mac mini. I shutdown, pulled power, waited a bit, the plugged in and powered on. Audio working. But I still have problem with keyboard not working after I wake computer up from sleep.

I too am having the problem but for me I have sound after boot up but no start-up sound. I noticed that once I've logged in and things start loading, the clock, date etc. in the menu bar my sound speaker is grayed out and is the last thing to load which is very odd and different, it's usually the first with the clock. Also my sound devices seem to be different, "Soundflower." I have a 2 channel and 16 channel and neither have a type. Speaking of sound the new mail sound is intermittent too. What a mess.

I fixed mine by changing the output device to internal speakers.

I fixed this by going into sounds preferences and selecting Headphones in the sound output device menu. I've got external speakers plugged into the headphones socket and these are automatically detected and listed a headphones. When I unplug the speakers the option in the preferences menu reverts to internal speakers.
The other option visible in the sound output device menu is 'Screenflick audio device, and for some reason the system had defaulted to this option automatically, resulting in greyed out audio symbol and no sound.
Working fine now.

I have a MBA that has started exhibiting this problem as well. It doesn't happen everytime but frequently, when I put it to sleep it will wake up with no sound; the speaker icon in the top bar is grayed out and when I go to the sound output (and input) preference pane it says there is "No output devices found". Usually a restart will give me sound back, but that is a real pain. I do NOT think this is a hardware issue - I think it's software related.

See these related/identical threads:

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=10260822
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10080538

This has been a case at apple engineering since the first day of snow leopard and apple has yet to acknowledge the problem.

also note the MacFixIt posting today:

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10415659-263.html?tag=mncol

after several days of PRAM resetting, rebooting ... I followed a hint I found which suggested to re-install Quicktime. I used 'Pacifist', re-installed Quicktime and sound is back !

After reading this thread and others, I solved the problem on my early 2009 MBP by twice inserting and removing iPod headphones.

I have to assume that there is either a sticky mechanical switch component in the stereo headphone/mic connector or that there is an OS bug related to the GPIO line connected to that switch.