Windows 7: The Audio Service is not running, Alienware M14x Windows 7 64-bit

Hey everyone, so i come home one day and turn on my laptop, i go to play some music and i realize nothing is playing. I look at the speaker icon and it has a white x in a red circle over it. I tried to open the settings but it kept saying "one or more audio services are not running." So i tried enabling "Windows Audio" in the services.msc, but all it says is "Windows could not start the Windows Audio service on Local Computer, Error2: The system cannot find the file specified." So i assumed that there were no output devices that were recognized by my laptop. But then i realized that everyday for the past year I have been listening with the same headphones, so how could this happen out of the blue? I look on skype settings for example, and there are no speakers recognized, (not in the drop down box), and no mic etc. I am really worried, and this has happened before, and the company changed my motherboard. Although now I do not have warranty so i am nervous. I am just so confused as to how this could happen so randomly. Oh and I also tried updating my drivers from dell.support website, and nothing seems to work. Please help if possible, Thanks alot.

PS: please be very specific, because I am alright with computers but the simpler the better, Thanks.

-Stryde

Please fill in your specs for future reference.
First of all, I would recommend trying a system restore to a date before the problem appeared.
If that does not work, try right clicking My computer->Properties->Device Manager and see if there any driver that is showing with an exclamation mark. If so, please post the error code and the Hardware ID that you can find by right clicking the driver, going to Properties->Details and choosing "Hardware IDs" from the dropdown menu.
Also, try going intro Control Panel -> Sound and see if your speakers/headphones are recognized there.

Thanks alot, i did the system restore and it worked like a charm. I really appreciate it, thanks man, just one more question, what did this actually do? Like i know it changed the settings back to what they were at this time, but what about all the things i had on my desktop, all of my documents and stuff like that, that i have created after this date?

You are very welcome!
System Restore is a bit tricky, and to be honest, I don't fully understand it myself. There were times when files on my desktop disappeared, at other times they didn't. However, if your files disappear, you can always cancel the restore, move the files on another partition or a stick, then restore again.

Hi Stryde,

Its great to hear that the issue has been resolved and system is working fine now. It could have been a simple issue for the audio driver gone corrupt and re-installing the same should have resolved the issue.

For future reference for a similar issue you can keep this article handy:

http://dell.to/1ax3yMu

Also, update your system specs here by following this.

If you have any further queries, please feel free to contact us.