Lose wired connection to speakers after several days of PC uptime

On my Win 7 PC, I have wired speakers, as well as bluetooth-connected speakers. I mostly use the wired speakers. But after several days of PC uptime (without a power cycle/restart), I lose audio to the wired speakers. At this point my options are to turn on the bluetooth connected speakers, use one of my HDMI monitors to function as a speaker, or to power cycle the PC, which reliably restores the audio connection to the wired speakers.

Seems to me this is a software problem, not a hardware problem. Maybe there is a service I need to restart?

I tried restarting the Realtek Audio Service, which seems to be how my wired speakers connect to the PC, but that didn't resolve the issue.

Any suggestions?

fireberd said:

Please fill in the "My System Spec's". All we can do is guess or offer general suggestions without it.

Updated, thanks.

fireberd said:

I do some support on the Dell forums and don't recall seeing anyone else with an XPS 8700 with this problem.
When it happens do you still have Headset audio from the front panel headset jack?

Here is the Dell Win 7 driver. If you are not using it download and install it and see if it makes any difference.
Support for XPS 8700 | Drivers & downloads | Dell US

I ended up restarting the computer and the wired connection is fine now. Next time it goes out (which will be in several days assuming I don't restart for that long), I'll try the front panel headset jack and report back.

Will also check on the driver version and update if the one at the Dell link is newer, thanks.

fireberd said:

Its been a week. Any update?

Thanks for asking. I powered off the computer Sunday, as I usually do after running Windows Update. It's been running since then without issue.

I'll follow up when the audio port drops out.