WTF wrong wit my spekkers??

so my pain in the ass neighbor finally moved out and I wanted to start using my 7.1 speaker system again, but I find that none of the speakers are making any sound whatsoever. nothings muted, all the settings are correct as far as I can tell.

I had previously just been hooking my headphones into the little box that apparently controls all this shit, and it works just fine, but when I unplug it no sound comes out of my other speakers.

I hadn't changed any settings that I know of since I've used them last, there's no extra buttons needed to push to switch sound modes or anything, and I have a feeling I had this problem before when I was first setting them up about a year or two ago. I had unplugged one of the speakers when it fell off my monitor several months ago, but I plugged it back in and that shouldn't have done anything anyway.

so what's going on here?

also my speakers are the creative gigaworks s750 and the sound driver is sound blaster live 24-bit if that makes a damn bit of difference.

If you play a sound but no speakers are plugged, does it play?

It would still go to an audio device if one is found, would it not, >>2? I hypothesize that it would, in fact play. Rather than be emitted as vibrations through so-called "spekkers", it would be emitted as a series of pulses of energy through the audio out device, and would sound like one hand clapping.

*sigh* this thread is made of so much fail and wasted effort.  Seriously, I'm getting reamed for having a USB keyboard?  A USB KEYBOARD?!  Really, maybe I'd understand if USB ports were at a premium and I didn't actually have you know, EIGHT of them.  Also, power consumption?  Yeah, I'm going to make my system unstable because of the negligible amount of power my damn keyboard takes.  Sorry I'm an idiot for wanting to read my keyboard at night so it's lighted.  I must be a complete fag.  Sorry I found my $5 PS/2 IBM keyboard uncomfortable to type on.  So since I have my keyboard hooked up, now I can only hook up...my mouse, my external hard drive...eerr, make that six of them.  All at once.  Hell, make that six USB fondue pots.  No, six USB calculators.  Just in case one breaks.