Audio Problem

[hoosier_daddy]

Well I have a super-tricky audio problem that hopefully someone can help me diagnose...here goes nothing:

I just built a new computer running Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit, and finally finished getting everything installed and put together. Everything worked fine, including the sound...I transferred my music collection from my external hard drive onto my computer's internal hard drive (2x500GB Western Digital drives), and sometime shortly afterwards my sound has quit working. Not sure if that's the exact reason, but I thought it would be relevant to include.

Here are the symptoms: I get no streaming audio online, nor do I get any audio in Windows Media Player. If I do play a file in Media Player 11, the windows Volume Mixer shoows a little green bar jumping around, indicating that it is outputting sound...no, it's not muted. What's weird is the little green bar only shows up under "Device" but nothing shows up under the volume bar for "Windows Media Player" within the mixer. Basically, I can't get any sound whatsoever out of anywhere, *except* for when I play test sounds (such as the test sounds from within the Sounds portion of the Control Panel--i.e., configuring my 5.1 surround system)...so I do know that the speakers are connected and working, there is some kind of weird software glitch.

What I've done: I uninstalled and reinstalled the high definition audio driver, and that didn't fix anything...and I've also ran a complete system test with Norton 360 which came up negative, so I don't think it's a virus. I'm sorta at a loss...I suppose I could reformat and start everything all over, but I don't want to do that unless I have to--although it's not a huge deal because I did just build the computer so I haven't settled in too much yet. I was wondering if anyone on here had any thoughts or suggestions before I scuttled the ship, though...

Thanks in advance !

 

[TrainTrackHack]

Noob advice: Make sure that you don't have any volumes turned down?.
Also, have you tried any other media players/browsers?

 

[hoosier_daddy]

I definitely have the audio volume turned up, both software-wise and hardware wise...to confirm this, I do hear sounds through the speakers whenever I play the test sounds through the Control Panel; it's just that nothing else works. I've tried streaming audio/video through Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, sound effects through applications and Quicktime...none of them have functioning audio.

Just so you can see what my Mixer looks like, I've attached a screenshot of it. Notice that it's a little glitchy looking, the font is wrong for Media Player and there is some black space on one of the bars...also note that the green bar for the high definition audio device, indicating that the computer is outputting sound, is not matched on Windows Media Player (where I was playing a song), so somehow or another the sound is working at the driver level but is not being output through the actual applications.

I know, this is an extremely weird problem...but fortunately, the last remaining issue with my new workstation before it's fully functional.

Any ideas on what I can/should do to fix the problem? I'd like to avoid a total system reinstall if at all possible, but that is a last-resort option. I definitely don't have a 500 watt RMS 5.1 speaker system just to look pretty

Thanks !