Stereo Mixer "What U Hear" Suddenly Stopped Working

[stack]

I realize the title happens frequently in general. I myself have had to go in and restore the device countless times on reboot. That's not the issue (default device, device enabled, etc).

For some mysterious reason, my What U Hear is malfunctioning and picking up absolutely nothing as of last night's reboot. Prior to this for the last few years since being on Win 7, I've had no issues (other than the common restore the default, enable it, etc).

So what might have changed?
1. I had a power outage mid day yesterday. I'm pretty sure I didn't attempt to use my What U Hear after this outage, but DID use it just prior to the outage (but was not recording or anything when the outage hit, but SF 9.0 was open)
2. I have gone into the BIOS and disabled HD Audio (since my MOBO has onboard)... I really thought this second one was going to fix my problem, but no.

When I go to check my devices in the audio pop-up, it shows my speakers as the default playback device and the oscillator goes as I play something. When I look at the recording tab, with the What U hear device enabled & defaulted, the oscillator just sits there dead. When I go to properties and either select "default playback device" OR select my external speakers (both of which should be the speakers, WHICH DO oscillate and work just fine) it doesn't matter... What U Hear still does not pick anything up!!!

Any ideas?

I'm sort of frustrated here and am out of ideas.
Thanks!

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Two general ideas:

Try a system restore to a point in time before you had issues--before the power outage issue.

Uninstall audio drivers/sound card, reboot, and reinstall audio drivers.

Either might work.

It's at least possible that you had hardware damage due to the power outage.

Stereo mix is shaky on Windows 7 as I am sure you know.

 

[stack]

How do I restore to a prior boot?

I have a back up HDD that I cloned around the first of the month, but would rather not go that way because of loss of data on a few databases... (yeah, I should probably have something that backs up continually but whatever)

 

[ignatzatsonic]

How do I restore to a prior boot?

I have a back up HDD that I cloned around the first of the month, but would rather not go that way because of loss of data on a few databases... (yeah, I should probably have something that backs up continually but whatever)

Control panel/system/system protection

Then poke the "system restore" button.

Then poke "next"

Your restore points should be shown on the next screen.

Put a checkmark in "show more restore points".

Highlight the one you want (a couple of days back, probably) and then poke "next" to start it running.

Your system will reboot. Should take 2 or 3 minutes total.

System Restore is a very valuable part of Windows 7 and will bail you out of a lot of jams. You should familiarize yourself with it.

You should have restore points dating back weeks if you have a default configuration.

It may or may not solve your sound issue.

System Restore restores a saved registry and effectively moves your system to an earlier point in time. Your data is not touched.

It's good, but not perfect. Occasionally it will not restore and you are stuck with the current situation.

 

[stack]

ah-hah! there was a windows update yesterday.... it says it was in the morning, that makes no sense - could the time stamp be wrong?

 

[ignatzatsonic]

ah-hah! there was a windows update yesterday.... it says it was in the morning, that makes no sense - could the time stamp be wrong?

Why would you think it is wrong?


Windows Update usually makes restore points before it actually installs the updates.

At any rate, I wouldn't worry about it.

Pick a restore point from a couple of days ago and see if it helps.

 

[chev65]

I realize the title happens frequently in general. I myself have had to go in and restore the device countless times on reboot. That's not the issue (default device, device enabled, etc).

For some mysterious reason, my What U Hear is malfunctioning and picking up absolutely nothing as of last night's reboot. Prior to this for the last few years since being on Win 7, I've had no issues (other than the common restore the default, enable it, etc).

So what might have changed?
1. I had a power outage mid day yesterday. I'm pretty sure I didn't attempt to use my What U Hear after this outage, but DID use it just prior to the outage (but was not recording or anything when the outage hit, but SF 9.0 was open)
2. I have gone into the BIOS and disabled HD Audio (since my MOBO has onboard)... I really thought this second one was going to fix my problem, but no.

When I go to check my devices in the audio pop-up, it shows my speakers as the default playback device and the oscillator goes as I play something. When I look at the recording tab, with the What U hear device enabled & defaulted, the oscillator just sits there dead. When I go to properties and either select "default playback device" OR select my external speakers (both of which should be the speakers, WHICH DO oscillate and work just fine) it doesn't matter... What U Hear still does not pick anything up!!!

Any ideas?

I'm sort of frustrated here and am out of ideas.
Thanks!

This sounds like the usual flaky Creative driver problem to me. You might want to search for Daniel K Creative drivers which work much better.

 

[stack]

system restore did NOT solve the problem.

I guess perhaps I should be relieved? Will try Daniel K drivers... hopefully will be able to figure that out on my own & will report back.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

If you had a known good and working regular Creative Labs driver, I don't know why you would need the Daniel K drivers, but anything is worth a shot.

I think I tried the Daniel K's when I had Vista and Creative Labs, but I can't recall if they helped.

Why not uninstall and then reinstall whatever driver you were using?

Creative Labs is generally terrible for driver support.

You can bypass that by getting another sound card--even an external USB.

 

[stack]

any ideas on where to find one that will actually run? I DL'd X-Fi series Support Pack 2.5 and the darn thing wouldn't run on my system (even though it supposedly will work for 32 or x86). Didn't realize that creative sucked hard... what else you supposed to buy?

Well, perhaps I'll attempt a re-install of existing drivers (if I can find them, hmmm)

 

[ignatzatsonic]

any ideas on where to find one that will actually run? I DL'd X-Fi series Support Pack 2.5 and the darn thing wouldn't run on my system (even though it supposedly will work for 32 or x86). Didn't realize that creative sucked hard... what else you supposed to buy?

Well, perhaps I'll attempt a re-install of existing drivers (if I can find them, hmmm)

Your first post implies that you had it all working well at one time and then it suddenly went bad. Isn't that true?

If it worked well at one time with driver X, I would think driver X would still work if it had not been corrupted and if you had no hardware issues.

But with Creative, anything is possible.

You may have even received something in a Windows Update that affected Stereo Mix--such as a new driver or?? I don't like to get new drivers from Windows Update for that reason.

You should be able to see what driver you have in Device Manager.

Stereo Mix on Windows 7 is not available on all sound cards.

I have it working OK with onboard sound from Realtek.

I've been told that the following sound cards support stereo mix in Windows 7, but cannot vouch for it personally:


Turtle Beach Audio Advantage SRM USB external

HT Omega Striker 7.1

Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi series (excluding Extreme Audio series) and Sound Blaster Audigy series (excluding Sound Blaster Audigy LE, SE, and Audigy Value).

 

[stack]

Your logic makes sense. Assuming something didn't cook when the power went out (I don't think it was a surge, and I have a surge protector obv) - system restore no work, so something went wacky and the driver is the obvious place to look. I'm sure I have a copy of this on one of my HDDs - will attempt it in a bit.
Thanks for your help and will post when after I give it a shot.

 

[stack]

Update:

Installed the newest driver from creative. The one I was using before was a year older. I figured I'd try the new download first to see if it worked.
1. Good news is that it works
2. It installed an annoying creative auto-update software
3. the oscillator that I mentioned in my OP no longer works, ha ha, for either the recording tab OR the playback tab! weird, and figures that creative's upgrade would be worse, LOL.

Given the above, it's obvious that the problem WAS the driver, and probably due to the power outage corrupting it somehow. I'll keep my eye on this and see if it gets weird again.
Thanks again!!!

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Update:

Installed the newest driver from creative. The one I was using before was a year older. I figured I'd try the new download first to see if it worked.
1. Good news is that it works
2. It installed an annoying creative auto-update software
3. the oscillator that I mentioned in my OP no longer works, ha ha, for either the recording tab OR the playback tab! weird, and figures that creative's upgrade would be worse, LOL.

Given the above, it's obvious that the problem WAS the driver, and probably due to the power outage corrupting it somehow. I'll keep my eye on this and see if it gets weird again.
Thanks again!!!

Good job!

I'd turn off that god-forsaken auto-update thing if at all possible. It sounds like a recipe for disaster. You're lucky to have a driver that works now, so why auto-update?