I really can't find much of an answer for this, but you'd think it should be possible. Recently on my laptop, the right speaker died. I need to crack it open and solder the wire connection at some point. But in the meantime I'm trying to figure out a way to utilize the remaining working speaker and instead of all the audio playing back on the laptop as stereo, have it all play back as mono through the one speaker. I have found no way to do this.
Any input that could be useful? Seems like there should be some totally easy way to do this, but after looking into it a bit, seems impossible.

OK, I found a partial answer. You can configure Winamp to force mono playback. I still would prefer some way to configure the whole system to force any audio to mono instead of just a single application, so if anyone has any ideas...

Hmmm. How about this, Buggy:

Right-click on the volume icon in the system tray and go to Adjust Audio Properties, then on the Audio tab in the Sound playback area, click Advanced.... Now you should be able to select your speaker setup from drop-down list. Try "Laptop mono speakers."

That was one of the first things I tried. Doesnt seem to do a thing, unfortunately.

Damn. Did you try restarting after changing the setting? I wouldn't think that'd be necessary, but I dunno.

Yeah, it's been set like that for a couple days actually. Rebooted a bunch since then. I would guess maybe that those settings only make any difference depending on the sophistication of the device driver. In this case, it doesnt seem to do anything.

Windows itself doesn't seem to have any other options (that I can find) for switching to mono. Does your headphone port still work?

Yes, I could use headphones. But it's not a viable solution for what I'm doing. I need to hear other things going on away from the computer, which I couldnt do if I used headphones.
This just might mean I'll really have to get on cracking open my system and doing some solder work

If you happen to have a pair of those cheap little speakers that plug into a headphone port lying around somewhere, they might do as a temporary workaround.

That kinda sucks because I'm pretty mobile, which is why I was looking into a software workaround. Thanks for the ideas tho

D'oh! I forgot that we were talking about a laptop when I made that last suggestion.

Sorry I couldn't help more. Hopefully someone else will step in here and lay down some knowledge.