how to solve greyed out volume control

Not sure if you ended up solving your problem or not, but for others who are looking for a solution, I had the same problem--and figured out an easy, uncomplicated way to fix it! Earlier today, I downloaded an application to my computer (it was a screen recording one). After launching it and using it, whenever I tried to raise the volume, my sound icon showed up but it had a little crossed out circle under it. At the top of my screen, where people can also adjust their volume, the icon was greyed out. I solved this problem by going to System Preferences>Sound. Then, there should be three sections: sound effects, input, and output. Under each tab, there should be a drop down menu that decides where sound comes out. On the sound effects tab, it says "Play sound effects through". Next to it should be the drop down menu. Click on it, and make sure it's selected as "Internal Speakers." Then go to the input and output tabs, and make sure it's all selected on Internal speakers. This worked for me! You may not be in the same situation as I was, but hopefully this helps at least one person! 🙂

Those who have tried all the above given solutions and unable to solve the problem , following solution worked for me --

1.Connect to any bluetooth device ( e.g car music system, wireless bluetooth headphone ) , it would reset audio input /output device , the grey icon was removed immediately in my case .

Yes! No speakers on imac for months. Read from my new best friend the following low tech cure. Blast of air into headphones jack and then inserted headphone plug vigorisly (sic) and plugged and unpluged couple times. Et voila! Speakers cranking. I forgot how good they sound. As we say in Hawaii "try chance um".If can,can.If no can,no can.Stoked on Maui!

Try resetting PRAM

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.8) 2.4GHz IntelCore i5 320 HD 8GB RAM ParallelsDesktop7.0

Resetting PRAM didn't help me either ....

I have also tried the following suggested in this article

http://applehelpwriter.wordpress.com/tag/grayed-out/

Any other suggestions?

PradeepReddy wrote:

Resetting PRAM didn't help me either ....

I have also tried the following suggested in this article

http://applehelpwriter.wordpress.com/tag/grayed-out/

Any other suggestions?

This solved my problem. The volume icon on the top bar immediately returned to black, and I have volume control back.

I have the same problem but it came and time after time, I lose sound control after every reboot and I found this unique solution to do the trick :http://applehelpwriter.com/tag/grayed-out/

The first manipulation did it as any other did not, I am looking for a definitive fix now.

Finally, I fixed it and so far so good.

What I did is:

Open a console and type in :

sudo chown -R _coreaudiod:admin /Library/Preferences/Audio

This will fix permissions.

Then type in:

sudo update_dyld_shared_cache -force

This will clear and rebuild dyld (dynamic linker)

And finish with:

sudo killall coreaudiod

To restart the audio daemon. The sound should come back instantly and keep working on reboot.

Out of curiosity, did you try Repairing permissions using Disk Utility before manually changing with chown?

I realize that wouldn't help with the re-linking, though.

Of course, I did it with no success at all!

I tried almost everything available with Onyx which was not harmful. Clearing all the caches etc...

Only dyld cache rebuild did the trick (done with Onyx though, but I gave the command line in case of )

I forgot to mention that I even changed the logic board due to a graphic chipset failure and the problem was already present before exchange.

I had the very same problem and your solution worked a treat, Thanks a lot

I had the same problem, I tried everything in here but did not work for me. What worked though was to plugin your headset, open activity monitor then force kill coreaudiod process, monitor the volume icon closely, once you see that the voilume icon disappears, immediatly remove your headset by pluggin it out.

It took me a couple of tries before it went back to normal. Hope this helps.

Mac OS 10.8.3 finally solved the problem for me.

This is broken for me as well.

Through trial and error I found that uninstalling the DisplayLink (DL-3xxx) driver for my Toshiba Dynadock resolved the issue.

Of note is that when I start up with the driver installed and I Option-Click the Volume button in the menubar, it says that the output device is the dynadock, even if in settings I have it setup for headphones.

After killing coreaudio, the volume button is restored to working order (until reboot) and Option-Clicking it in the menubar now correctly states that the output is the headphones.