No sound in Windows 7

I have no speakers, only headphones which I plug into the front green jack on my PC. I've been getting no sound through them for the last few days. I've tried with multiple headphones/earbuds (with the latest drivers) which are confirmed to be working with my iPod.

This leads me to believe that it is a problem with the headphone jack, however the jack does appear to recognize that a device is plugged in. In addition I've tried plugging them in to the rear headphone jack and still no joy.

I have tried:


Checking the system is not muted and that the headphones are in securely.
Rebooting;
System Restore (System restore fails, I suspect this may be due to corrupt files on my HDD);
Going into Control Panel>Sound, setting the headphones as the default device - (it recognises them as "speakers" like it always did);
Changing the sound format to a lower bit rate;
Disabling "all sound effects" and re-enabling ;
Restarting Windows Audio Services;
Running multiple virus scans with Avast and AVG;

I don't wish to re-install windows prematurely, especially as I don't want to fork out on an external Hard Drive to avoid losing my files. Can anyone help?

thanks, fastdude

Sorry to bump so fast but only an hour after posting here I've fixed it! I tied up all the jacks as one input device, so basically I'm just putting my headphones into the red mic jack it works great

Is your soundcard a Realtek one?