Why does sound stop at times--can't be heard and yet....

[pintree3]

From time to time (possibly when the PC has been on for a long time) I hear no sound--no Windows sounds, no player sounds (movie or music). And yet if I go to my Windows Volume mixer and test it, all works well; I can hear things. In such cases all i need to do is reboot and all is OK again. So I am not asking how to solve this problem per se, I am merely asking why is this so? How does it happen? And is there anything that one can do to solve this without rebooting?
For example now, I am in the process of doing a backup. it'll be hours before it finishes but meanwhile I can not play music, or watch videos, youtube or anything. Not for a pleasant experience as you might guess.
Thank you

 

[fireberd]

Hard to tell. First thought, do you have the correct driver from the vendor? Reinstalling the driver may help.

If you have HDMI and an HDMI cable plugged in usually it will default to HDMI rather than the Speakers.

Sound is on a shared Interrupt (IRQ) with a higher priority device and depending on the higher priority device it may be interfering.

So many possibilities, that just based on what you've posted all we can do is guess or offer general suggestions.

One question, what or how are you doing a back up that it "takes hours"? I use Macrium Reflect and can backup my "C" drive to either an internal hard drive or a USB connected hard drive in less than 30 minutes.

 

[pintree3]

Thanks fireberd. About the backup. I tried 4 in all including the Windows 7, Cobian and Easus and they all take hours. I have noticed that it is especially long if you compress it to a 7zip file. One reason why I would assume it takes long is because it's via a USB. The other reason is I am talking about large files 200Gig and the like--this involves many photos, word documents, copies of my purchased software etc.. What's the size of your transfers? If you're doing the same amount then maybe I'll give yours a try

 

[fireberd]

Macrium free works good. My backups mostly are from SSD to either internal hard drive or USB connected hard drive. I can do 150GB in about 15 minutes to internal hard drive and about 20 minutes to USB connected hard drive.

I used to use Acronis True Image and it took much longer.

Download Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - MajorGeeks