sound

do you have an external volume control on the laptp and is it turned up. if no slide switch or roller control switch do you see how to change the volume via the keyboard
when i test sound the first thing i check is volume level. external plus the windows volume control. control panels/ sounds. make sure it is turned 'up' and not muted. then i have a look in control panel/system/device manager to see if the sound card is enabled and no yellow bangs or question marks next to it. i double click it to have a look at the properties to see if i have any control over output devices. maybe it is set to output to the sound port on the back and you need to enable the built in speakers.
if no joy with any of this i would tshoot 'no sound' at the compaq website
then i plug in a known good set of earbuds and go to control panel sounds to see if i can play the windows exclamation sound and hear it in the earbuds. if that works, i try an audio cd.
if nothing works, check the BIOS to see if the sound card is enabled there.

you may want to check and make sure your speakers are digital, if they are, you need to check the advance in the sound control and make sure the digital speaker box is checked. i have had a few people running windows 98 have this prob and they didnt even realize that their speakers were digital sound. :o) hope i helped