Speakers messed up, really need some help

[Hagglebaron]

So i bought a pair of headphones recently, they plugged into a USB port but didn't work. My laptop recognized the headphone device once, but it still didn't seem to do anything. The Headphones have little dials that presumably change the volume of the left and right speakers, and i fiddled with them while trying to get the set to work but eventually gave up.

Then came the real problem, my laptop's left built in speaker (it has two; left and right) no longer works. When i do a sound test in the driver menu, the left speaker plays the test sound at a lower volume than the right, but during normal use the left speaker is completely silent. In the driver menu the speaker in question has a yellow exclamation mark over it, and under details it says "this device cannot start (code 10)". Checking for solutions turns up nothing.

Can anyone help me fix this? I really don't get why the speaker is acting this way, because clearly it still works (as evidenced by the sound test). I updated the sound drivers, restarted etc, but it doesn't help.

Any assistance is greatly appreciated