Yes, it is quite general. I am using an HP Compaq laptop. I upgraded early January to Windows 7 Ultimate from Vista Home.
Recently, I have only been using sound through some Insignia speakers plugged into the single female ended headphone NIC. Then a few days ago I just hear nothing. It didnt cut out on me, I just noticed no sound. I turned off the speaker and unplugged them.
Default internal speakers is listed as "Context High Definition SmartAudio 221".
All aspects of this seem fine. I have checked all settings in Device Manager and have attempted to update the driver which only returns message that most recent driver is running. I checked all properties on this device, all checks out.