Wow, it just happened again. About once a week, at completely random
my sound fails with this error message. It is easily fixed with a
restart or system restore, but I seriously wanna figure out the
etiology behind this weirdness.

My sound devices are definitely hooked up, installed and appear fine
on the Device list. Does anyone know of a way to probe further? I
wanna crack down on whatever the hell's causing this.

On May 19, 3:21*pm, Industrial One <industrial_...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Wow, it just happened again. About once a week, at completely random
> my sound fails with this error message. It is easily fixed with a
> restart or system restore, but I seriously wanna figure out the
> etiology behind this weirdness.
>
> My sound devices are definitely hooked up, installed and appear fine
> on the Device list. Does anyone know of a way to probe further? I
> wanna crack down on whatever the hell's causing this.

==
You need to install a "Gremlin Chaser"...that will solve your
problems.
==

Industrial One wrote:
> Wow, it just happened again. About once a week, at completely random
> my sound fails with this error message. It is easily fixed with a
> restart or system restore, but I seriously wanna figure out the
> etiology behind this weirdness.
>
> My sound devices are definitely hooked up, installed and appear fine
> on the Device list. Does anyone know of a way to probe further? I
> wanna crack down on whatever the hell's causing this.

Someone with that error here, claims to have solved it by reinstalling
the sound driver. I don't believe in miracles - usually something
obvious like that, has no effect.

http://forums.techguy.org/multimedia...8780078-a.html

The sound driver, is the one for the sound card or built-in sound chip.
Typical company names are CMedia, RealTek, Sigmatel (IDT), SoundMax
(analog.com).

*******

There are some kinds of special software, that can interfere with your
sound.

For example, in-game voice software. While you're playing a game,
you talk into a microphone and the other players on your team
can hear you. That involves adding echo suppression to the audio
subsystem (that's so you don't get a squeal of feedback from the
computer speakers to the microphone).

Some telephony software (Skype?) also adds echo suppression, and
apparently some of that stuff remains running even when you
aren't using the application.

So for general weirdness, there are a few things like that to
look out for. Regular applications, like say a music player,
shouldn't need to do that.

*******

When you see references to "DirectSound", as far as I know
that is part of DirectX. You can reinstall DirectX as much
as you want. DirectX can't be made to go backwards, so
installing DirectX 7 on top of DirectX 9, should not
do anythihg. If you install DirectX 9 on top of DirectX 9,
there should be no effect either. So if you wanted to, it's
generally safe to reinstall that Microsoft package. I don't see
a reason to do it, but thought I'd mention it.

In general, when looking at the DirectX download page, the descriptions
and what you get, can be deceiving. Sometimes, they give you
software for the wrong OS (DirectX 9c is the last one for WinXP).
So if you download a package, and the installer complains that
the OS is the wrong version, then you'll know that what it's saying
is true. The idea is, they no longer give a rat's ass about WinXP users,
with respect to DirectX. So you have to search around, to find out
what to do. It wasn't always that bad.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/e...D-85FC422D1388

Paul

On May 19, 5:24*pm, Paul <nos...@needed.com> wrote:
> Industrial One wrote:
> http://forums.techguy.org/multimedia...d-card-error-8...

That guy didn't have proper drivers installed. Not close to my issue.
I've gotten this error before when my sound device was disabled in the
BIOS, and nothing fixed it besides correcting the BIOS. Now I'm
getting it for practically no solid reason, and it's easily fixed with
a reboot until it happens again next week and the week after that.

> The sound driver, is the one for the sound card or built-in sound chip.
> Typical company names are CMedia, RealTek, Sigmatel (IDT), SoundMax
> (analog.com).

I have Realtek.

> There are some kinds of special software, that can interfere with your
> sound.
>
> For example, in-game voice software. While you're playing a game,
> you talk into a microphone and the other players on your team
> can hear you. That involves adding echo suppression to the audio
> subsystem (that's so you don't get a squeal of feedback from the
> computer speakers to the microphone).
>
> Some telephony software (Skype?) also adds echo suppression, and
> apparently some of that stuff remains running even when you
> aren't using the application.
>
> So for general weirdness, there are a few things like that to
> look out for. Regular applications, like say a music player,
> shouldn't need to do that.

I'm willing to accept that an app, or some malware could be causing
this, but I can't name anything I'm using now that I haven't used for
years. I don't use any telephony software and I wouldn't even touch
Skype.

> In general, when looking at the DirectX download page, the descriptions
> and what you get, can be deceiving. Sometimes, they give you
> software for the wrong OS (DirectX 9c is the last one for WinXP).
> So if you download a package, and the installer complains that
> the OS is the wrong version, then you'll know that what it's saying
> is true. The idea is, they no longer give a rat's ass about WinXP users,
> with respect to DirectX. So you have to search around, to find out
> what to do. It wasn't always that bad.

The sound driver installation went fine, and worked perfectly before.

There is nothing relevant I can find in Event Viewer around the time
my sound halted. Is there not a way to diagnose the states of
connected devices? How do I take a system snapshot, so I can take
another one when my sound was fine, and figure out what's ****ing with
my box?

One more thing, DirectX diagnostics says "No sound card was found. If
one is expected, you should install a sound driver provided by the
hardware manufacturer."

Both a sound card and drivers are installed, and as soon as I restart,
the sound card will magically be found, so WTF?

Industrial One wrote:
> One more thing, DirectX diagnostics says "No sound card was found. If
> one is expected, you should install a sound driver provided by the
> hardware manufacturer."
>
> Both a sound card and drivers are installed, and as soon as I restart,
> the sound card will magically be found, so WTF?

Well, at least that's a useful bit of diagnostic info.

I don't know how to fix that, not a clue :-(

The sound driver software, enables the OS to find a sound device.
That is then "registered" so that other software can find it. I
don't know how that works. DirectSound should be finding the
sound subsystem, perhaps evidence of it is in the registry
under ENUM somewhere. I don't know if I've seen your exact
symptoms before.

The question would be, what would it take to "tip over" DirectSound
so it can't run...

Paul