Audio Playback Issues

Myrph

Posts: 10   +0
Problems started a couple of days ago when the cut scenes in Avatar The Legend of Korra video game would play without sound. I could hear the audio in the menus and in the game itself, but during the FMVs there was no sound. When I then tried to find the videos on YouTube using Firefox, I was again able to watch the videos, but could not hear any audio. I initially wondered if it was an issue with the videos themselves, but after reading comments that directly referenced the sound I realised the issue was with my computer.

Since then I have lost audio in nearly every piece of software I have installed on my computer, including all of my games, my media players and Firefox. Bizarrely, however, When watching videos on Google Chrome I am able to hear the sound, and when I play flash content on Firefox, I also get sound. Windows sounds also work.

I don't believe this to be a driver issue, as the problem persists between my USB DAC that I typically use for audio playback and my on board sound card, and updating/reinstalling the drivers for both had no effect.

The other things I've tried have been fiddling around with the advanced audio settings, double checking that programs haven't been accidentally muted, reinstalling my codec packs and my media players. Windows troubleshooter has not found any issues, and all of my devices are showing as functional in Device Manager.

All the common troubleshooting steps have failed me up to this point, and the fact that I'm still able to get audio from some software just seems to further reinforce the fact that this is either a completely obscure problem, or else something imperceptibly obvious.

Any suggestions that doesn't include completely reinstalling Windows or upgrading to Windows 10 would be greatly appreciated.
 
"Since then I have lost audio in nearly every piece of software I have installed" - if that means you ran one piece of software and then another, sound worked and then stopped working, so many minutes into being used, I would suspect malware.

If, on the other hand, you mean some sound stopped working and on other software you have found it isn't working as well, and this is true for the DAC but not the sound chip then I would suspect USB - not bad enough to be broken, but still wonky - if so, http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/usb_devices_view.html might give insight.

If you mean sound is partially broken on both DAC and on inboard chip and in the same way, I would suspect an OS driver or service. Then I would go into Admin mode and run sfc /scannow and chkdsk /r (check Event Viewer log for result).
 
Just reminded that you should try a complete power cycle first.

Power down everything - unplug everything from outlet, remove batteries from everything wireless / bluetooth, etc Now hit start buttons as if you were starting up (allows all the capacitor power to flatten out).

Plug things back in and restart the computer. Then add power to all the outlying stuff and confirm that it identifies and loads properly.

Then try software and see if sound works.
 
If you mean sound is partially broken on both DAC and on inboard chip and in the same way, I would suspect an OS driver or service. Then I would go into Admin mode and run sfc /scannow and chkdsk /r (check Event Viewer log for result).

Just did both of these and everything is back to normal! Thanks for your assistance!
 
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