Just had a strange thing happen on me recently. Two days ago my stock speakers because very silent, and the volume control did not affect the volume at all. They yesterday they were gone altogether. There was no audio output device at all (btw this makes quicktime crash wehn you try playing movies with sound! :)) Today I plugged the speakers in usb port 2 and everthing else in usb port 1 (it was vice versa), and everything is back to normal. Are my usb ports going bad ir was this just a Gremlin?