Sound on Laptop and Desktop Randomly Stops Working and Working

[Juniper Mucius]

So recently the sound on my desktop and my laptop has stopped working. For seemingly no reason. I really don't understand it.

I first noticed it with my desktop. The sound just randomly stopped working. But not...entirely. It's really strange and complicated what's been happening, so bare with me while I try to explain it as best I can.

PC:
First time sound stopped working on PC. Restarted computer, sound came back, no issues.

Second time I woke up to find VLC frozen. Sound wasn't working. I restarted VLC. No sound. Found out that there was no sound on the computer at all. When I'd try to increase the volume on VLC, it would only change within an interval of ten percent. So it was at 50 percent initially. Would not let me go below 50%, but not above 10%. Sound didn't work anyway. Restarted, sound returned VLC working fine.

Third time I was playing Dragon Age: Inquisition. Sound worked fine, using my headset (Turtle Beach). Went to speakers to lay down and watch some shows on VLC. No sound on speakers. Switched to Turtle Beach again, sound returned. Restarted VLC, now suddenly no sound on VLC OR speakers. Had to restart computer, no issues after restart.

Laptop:
First time sound stopped working, used the "disable audio and reenable audio driver," didn't solve anything. Restarted, sound came back. Sound stopped working again same day, restarted, sound came back.

The next time I restarted the audio driver (Realtek) and then I shut down Explorer and then restarted explorer via the task manager. Audio started working again.

Did same steps today, sound not working. Will have to, of course, restart my laptop.

One thing I noticed? If there is something currently playing, the sound won't go out for it even if sound goes out elsewhere. So I had VLC running constantly, and I could hear the sound from VLC while suddenly the sounds from everything else on the computer stopped working. However, once I restarted VLC, sound stopped. Only until restarting the computer...or waiting for it to work again, does the sound come back.

Other Info:
I find it weird that this is something happening to both my desktop and laptop at the same time. I did a malware bytes sweep of my desktop, found nothing. Drivers are up-to-date.

My desktop is custom built. I can't remember the MOBO right now, but it's only a couple years old. The laptop is about 5 or 6 years old at this point. The computer seems to recognize that speakers are hooked up, but when I would try and do tests, it would say it cant' do sound tests.

So it HAS to be a driver problem it seems, and not a MOBO issue. Especially since my desktop the sound comes via USB.

 

[Juniper Mucius]

Update: I'm not at home to test my PC, but I think I discovered the issue. It seems to possibly be a glitch or something with flash player.

After watching an episode of Daily Show on Hulu, I went back to Tumblr and saw that a video didn't have sound, and then all sound on my computer was suddenly gone. I then tried something out, and shut down flashplayer. That temporarily brought sound back.

But it quickly went away.

Then I shut down Firefox and flash player entirely, and sound comes back even when Flash Player comes up.

What could cause this?

 

[trinosaur]

OK, I joined this forum specifically so I could respond to this post because I have been having the exact same problem. And it only started a few days ago.

It usually happens after I find myself scrolling tumblr. I click to watch a video: a vine, a youtube vid, or a tumblr video. It will play fine the first time. But I keep getting a weird error on youtube vids as well. It will start to play, jump back to the beginning and then suddenly stop playing altogether. But if I stay on that page, 10 mins later I will discover the audio is playing while nothing else is going on. IT'S REALLY WEIRD AND FRUSTRATING. Because audio doesn't work on anything else on my computer!!

The only way to bring the audio back to the rest of my computer after this weird video error is to restart my computer, or restart the windows audio service or drivers. If I go into my sound settings and click "test" it tells me there's an error and it cannot playback audio.

Anyway, I thought it strange that watching videos on tumblr can suddenly make my audio go kaput, but seeing you also notice this pattern only confirms it for me.

 

[Juniper Mucius]

Hi trinosaur!

I just factory restored my PC, so I'm going to see if that fixes the issue for my PC at least. Once I have everything installed and running as normal, I'll respond to let you know if that fixed the issues with the PC at least.

 

[VoodooBG]

I have the exact same problem and I registered to "join the club". Nothing works with me. I reinstalled my system updated/downgraded drivers but my sound keeps stopping randomly until I restart. Sometimes it works when I restart my browser and sometimes the sound just lags and it's crackled. It's weird because even when I load audio files on Media Player the audio is gone or crackles until I stop everything and restart computer or browser.

EDIT: I also noticed that it happens when I'm on Tumblr or youtube. Especially when I play youtube videos - the video starts without sound then I get an error and it reloads automatically without sound again and same scenario over and over again. I really don't know where this annoying problem came from... Any suggestions?

 

[Mate2Mate]

Try killing the Flash Player process - worked for me

I found that the Flash Player (v13) process was randomly killing sound. Killing the process in Task Manager re-enabled sound.

Edit: Upgrading Flash Player to v16,0,0,235 corrected the problem.

 

[trinosaur]

Yeah, I'm still experiencing this issue. And it's good that I narrowed it down to being a Flash issue. I'm going to try to update it and see if that works. I'll post again when i find out.

 

[joshowar]

Updating flash doesn't fix it. I hope someone (adobe) comes up with a solution quickly.

 

[trinosaur]

Yeah. I updated flash and thought everything was good for a while. Then I had the exact same problem. After watching one or two vids on tumblr, the audio stopped working for my entire computer. I do not experience this problem outside of scrolling tumblr or even watching a couple vids on youtube.

Here's an interesting note though: I was skyping with my boyfriend during an audio crash earlier today, and skype audio continued to work in spite of literally everything else not playing sound and videos not working. So whatever I am *already* watching continues to work. But if I attempt any new audio-related events, they do not work until I restart my windows audio drivers. This only furthers my belief that it is a flash issue.

 

[Jappio]

I'm experiencing this problem too. Though my issue will come up when I'm playing Chess online, though that is of course probably run through Flash. Sometimes I can fix the problem by right clicking the sound icon on the bottom right, going to sounds, going under the Playback option... then I open up the sound device, click on a thing or two until I can hit "apply" and that'll fix my sound. However, that's not always true, and sometimes I need a full restart. Sometimes though I'll get an error message me telling me about a driver failing when the problem is real bad (been a few days now since I saw it, so I can't recall what it was exactly. It was a sound related driver). That needed a full reset as well. I can tell you that my computer uses a "IDT High Definition Audio" CODEC, if that's any help. Also an HP laptop too. Hopefully it's just a matter of like Flash updating versions and fixing this problem, or perhaps the IDT or windows updating a driver instead.

 

[joshowar]

I fixed this (2 days without sound issue now). The trick is to completely remove flash, and reinstall it. Instruction on how to do that, are here: Uninstall Flash Player | Windows

 

[tophi]

I have the same problem here. i tried completely removing Flash and reinstalling as you said, joshowar, but I'm still having the same problem.

Any help guys??

 

[Jappio]

I tried fixing it by removal, just as described in the link you provided Joshowar, and the problem still exists.

 

[tophi]

I reinstalled a clean windows 7 and still having the same issue even before installing flash\

I am starting to think it is something else

 

[NotSandwichMake]

So..

So what are the things in common here? anyone have the same parts? programs? or anything at all that may cause the problem? I have recently upgraded my pc with a motherboard and cpu. After that i got this problem and i am desperate to find a solution. I am a tech head so i have alot of things on my computer (mostly games and programs for rendering and sculpting) Ihave not found anything on my computer that can cause this. can it be a hardware issue? Just tossing ideas out there so someone might figure it out. I joined just for this issue. it is identical to mine and it messes up alot of my day when it happens.

 

[SwingBlade]

Wanted to post this here since this was one of the top hits while googling this issue myself. Made this account to post.

I had this issue on my brand-new gaming laptop, seeming out of nowhere. Randomly the sound would stop working entirely, and if I loaded up a video on Youtube, it went about 1/4 speed. A reboot would fix this but that is not a very convenient thing.

I noticed that at one point my sound was working fine and, 30 minutes later, it stopped (while I was at my desk). The only thing that really happened of significance was that the screen had timed out and turned itself off (power saving setting). As a test, I set my laptop to never turn off the screen while plugged in.

Since I made that change, I've not had this issue occur even once again. I have no idea why it worked, or why the screen shutting off was screwing with the sound and video playback, but this is what worked for me.