Laptop won't play sound through headphones

First time this has happened, usually always worked. I plugged my headphones in and heard some static through the headphones then when I tried to play any sound it came out of the speakers not the headphones. Have used this headphones recently and it worked. I tried going through the control panel and hardware and sound and all that, it shows nothing for headphones in playback devices so can't set headphones as default, there is only speakers on the screen. HELP