I'm having a rather strange problem where sound won't play from my speakers. If I insert something into the microphone jack, and remove it, I get about half a second of audio playing. At times, it seems to stick on after doing this, but after a few hours (or sometimes a day), it goes back to refusing to play audio. The computer seems to know whether or not something is plugged into the microphone, as in the audio dialog, plugging something in causes it to become the default recording device. If I boot into Ubuntu (I have it installed through Wubi), I can disable "Auto Mut" in alsamixer and get it to play correctly (and continue to mute when headphones are plugged in). I'm not sure what is wrong with it, but nothing I do helps. In Ubuntu, with "Auto Mut" enabled, it exhibits the same behavior as Windows 7.
Is there a Window's equivalent to "Auto Mut"? Does anyone know what "Auto Mut" does (does not disable speaker muting when things are plugged in)? Any ideas as to what is actually wrong with my computer?
If it is important, this problem appeared a few days after spilling soda on my laptop's keyboard.