So you plug in headphones to your laptop and sound stops: no sound goes neither out of speakers, nor out of the headphones, even though the driver indicates you plugged something into the audio out connector.
The problem is your Windows headphones playback device gone missing, and no one seems to know how to add it back. Normally they recommend to reinstall the sound driver, in my case that is a Realtek creation. Well, reinstallation didn’t help. Athoer advice is to enable showing disconnected and disabled audio devices also doesn’t help – there is no such devices Microsofts fixit utility also is of no use. You may try to send your computer to hibernation and then get it back on with the headphones plugged in. It helps sometimes. But the ultimate solution will be to completely remove Realtek audio drivers and use native Windows drivers instead. They work perfectly and I never had a single playaback devices issue with them.