Sound muting/un-muting rapidly, have to press keys twice, etc.

[s3ven]

About an hour ago Windows 7 went on the fritz. The sound rapidly mutes and un-mutes, I intermittently have to press the windows key (as well as some other keys) more than once, my start menu pins disappeared, and sometimes I'm clicking on buttons or menus and have to click twice.

I don't believe I changed any system settings or installed/uninstalled anything around the time this started happening.

I ran check disk from "Computer->disk->properties->tools->Check now" and it rebooted and took perhaps half an hour to scan, then started up (I didn't see any messages about errors).

I tried disabling all startup programs and services (except for Microsoft's), but the issues persisted. Here's a video of the crazy mute/un-muting problem:

2015-01-15_1832 - roboticsguy's library

Besides re-installing Windows 7, which I really don't have time to do right now, what can I do to try and fix this?

 

[fireberd]

Try a refresh of the sound. Go to the Device Manager, sound section. RIGHT click on the entry for your sound device and then LEFT click "Uninstall". DO NOT uninstall the drivers. Restart the PC and when Windows starts it will detect and reinstall the sound. This fixes most Windows/Sound corruptions and may take care of your problem.

 

[s3ven]

Thanks for your help, but unfortunately that did not fix the issue. Although now it isn't flickering back and forth so much, but after a while just changes to mute and stays there. My start menu pins have also disappeared.

 

[fireberd]

There is some basic PC problem. The sound muting is only a result of whatever PC problem you have, which sounds like either a keyboard or some other hardware problem.