wow, looks like this is still happening! i first ran into this issue several months ago and it fixed itself, but now its returned and it looks like nobodys found a fix for it yet! its actually my moms iPad 2 running on 5.0.1 that is having this issue. i also have an iPad 2 with the same setup but ive never run into this issue; just her.
so my run down of this problem is:
- the volume rocker doesnt work most times, other times the volume popup (gray box with megaphone symbol and volume level) will show but it will say 'sound effects' and volume will not rise or fall.
- in the multi-task bar, the volume bar has no slider to move the volume up or down.
- in Settings>General>Sounds i can move the volume slider for ringer and alerts (confirming that the speakers themselves are working fine). weird part here is if its set to change ringer/alert volume with buttons, the volume rocker will work and the bar for ringer/alerts will go up and down. if i turn that option off and i try the volume rocker the regular volume popup appears and volume goes up and down! but as soon as i leave Settings it stops working again 
- in any app that shows a volume bar (AVPlayer HD, for example, which is a media player) where it would normally show a volume bar, it says 'no volume available' and obviously there is no sound.
- when earbuds are plugged in, all the above issues go away and sound magically works as normal! volume bar in multi-task bar again has a slider and the volume popup will show and say 'headphones'. HOWEVER as soon as earbuds are unplugged, its back to square one
heres what ive tried:
- first obvious fixes would be rebooting, powering off and manually quitting apps via multi-task bar (then rebooting and powering off)
- i do not have Airplay
- Bluetooth is off and has never been used
- the last downloaded app was some kind of free game, but it has since been deleted and the device has been reset/powered on and off/rebooted with no changes
- holding the volume button 'high' for a while, as Monozark suggested, didnt seem to do anything
- i disabled wifi and rebooted, then suddenly when i booted up it played the unlocking sound but afterwards all volume stopped working again
- side switch is usually set to mute and works fine for muting/unmuting... when muted the bell popup will show with the bell crossed out and when unmuted the popup will show with the volume level for ringers/alerts but volume rocker is still unresposive and volume bar in multi-task bar will show no dot. ive tried setting this switch to orientation lock but ive seen no change.
- connecting to iTunes didnt seem to change anything. ive even tried rebooting/resetting/powering on and off while connected to iTunes and had no luck this iPad is never used with earbuds or other devices and recent use has only been to see if it changes anything.
like i said, this is the second time ive had to deal with this. the first time i took the iPad to an Apple Store and the tech was able able to see everything i was talking about. he was totally confused as to why this was happening and easily recognized that this couldnt me be manually caused by the user nor was it due to user neglect or misuse. the device he plugged into the iPad showed no device failures, crashes or any other reason for this issue to be occuring and i was like 5 seconds from a free replacement and all of a sudden it starts working again.
that was months ago, and i was so sure id seen the last of this freaky bug. im still in the middle of trying to fix it, and im going to return here regularly to see if anyones found a fix. just thought id share my experience in case it helped anyone. if i find a fix i will definitely share it here, also!
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