Odd sound problems...

L

Levone

New Member
For whatever reason, my sound card, both external and onboard, will just fail to be recognized spontaneously by my computer. They just stop working at some point and I can get no sound from applications (WinAmp, games, etc). BUT, I can get sound from Windows (such as the 'be-dink' sound when a caution window comes up or the 'donk' sound when an error plays, shutdown and logoff sounds, the whole shebang).

A restart will resolve the issue, but I'd like to prevent the issue from happening period.

Whenever I go to audio devices, it's like my computer no longer recognizes I have anything installed. Problem is, I go to device manager and bam, there they are. Computer recognizes them in one place but totally disregards them in another.

On top of that, I can't open up my volume control. Whenever I try to do so, a warning message comes up:
'There are no active mixer devices available. To install mixer devices, go to Control Panel, click Printers and Other Hardware, and then click Add Hardware. This program will now close'.

Problem is, I have drivers installed. Have even updated drivers and tried rolling back, but the problem still keeps reoccurring. This is infinitely frustrating and I'm just completely stumped and out of ideas as to why my sound card and onboard sound card both just randomly fail. They're not even options in the drop down menu under the Control Panel's Sound display.

Any ideas?
 
External and onboard - do you mean you have two soundcards? One usb and one pci(e)/integrated?
In this case try disabling one of the cards (onboard in bios, unplug the external), and generally bugger around with things like this looking for patterns.

If it's just the one soundcard you have, and I'm interpreting what you're saying wrong, I'd say a fresh install might be a good idea - It'll certainly ascertain whether it's a driver or hardware fault.

I've often found strange, unpredictable things like this can be traced to a dodgy/stressed power supply too; I used to have a computer with usb ports which would sometimes work, and programs which would randomly corrupt - a new p/s cured everything. Might be worth trying if you've another lying around.
 
External meaning not onboard my MB. Separate sound card.

Hrm....I guess the power supply could be it. I have a 550W Corsair unit powering a Radeon HD4850, 3 case fans, M2NPV-VM MB, 2 gigs of Crucial RAM, and two HDDs. Am I short in that department? I thought it'd be plenty.
 
Well a bit of good news. With the power of the internet I figured out it's caused by a service (Windows Audio) stopping. When I tell it to start again, everything is peachy.

So now it's a question of what's making my Windows Audio service randomly turn off.


Edit: Btw, this may or not be related but the second taskbar on my second monitor disappears at the same time that the audio thing usually happens. Also I ran AVG last night and it didn't find anything. May still be a virus or something but nothing that it can find.

And disabling/enabling my second monitor fixes the taskbar issue.
 
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As a way to keep the sound going (even if it isn't getting to the heart of the problem), you could try the following:

Right click my computer / manage / service & apps / services / go down to windows audio, and change its failure responses to 'restart the service'. It might work!
 
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