Sound just stops working in Vista

[MrChris]

Not sure what this is being caused by as it seams to affect even new sound
cards that I installed after I first though my sound card (or maybe speaker)
bit the dust.

One day I noticed that my sound was not working in Vista Ultimate x64 and
x32. Same issue on different machines both running Vista Ultimate 1 of them
is x64 the other is x32. Drivers all look good even after I reinstall them.
I play an MP3 And it looks as if its playing but I don't hear anything.
Device Manager/Event Viewer is clean as a whistle I then had a Sound Blaster
XFi- Fatality laying around so I plugged that in and installed its drivers
and disabled the Onboard sound card and same problem. So this leads me to
believe there to be a problem with the sound system (I guess) in Vista. Then
go figure like 2 weeks later my daughters computer in the living room Also
running Vista Ultimate is doing the same thing. I hate to just reinstall
Vista again. I dual boot XP, If I boot up into XP then Sound Works. So I
know the hardware/speakers are working.

When the sound stopped working nothing hardware/software (that I did)
changed.

Gigabyte GA-M55SLI-S4 Motherboard
NVidia 7300GS w/ 256mb
AMD x2 x64 4000+ 2.0GHz
2GB RAM
Onboard Sound Card (RealTek AC'97 Audio)
2x250GB SATA drives

 

[John Barnes]

You should start by going into the sound playback devices and make sure you
have it pointed to speakers and none of the sound sources are muted. You
may have either muted something, or reset to headphones or other output as
the output source if available.

 

[MrChris]

Thanks for the reply. I check the MUTE on every playback device also checked
that the playback device is set to my speakers. I set it to DIGITAL OUTPUT
then back to Speaker and still nothing.

Chris

 

[John Barnes]

I had an XP system that every now an then would drop sound. I had to
reinstall the drivers. Have you tried that, or maybe a different cable to
the amplifier. Too many have Vista and sound for it to be a general
problem. Very few posts for sound problems. I have Audigy, and RealTek
AC97 and HD on my computers and no problems. It was real slow getting the
Audigy drivers, but now okay and RealTek has been pumping out drivers like
crazy lately.

 

[Guest]

My problem is similar. I use an Audigy soundcard in Digital Storm Twister
Ultra [SLI].
Usually after playing Tombraider Anniversary, or just after some time since
restart, sound drops out.
Closer inspection revealed that on opening iTunes, to see if sound was
indeed gone, and playing a tune, the progress bar on the tune would stick at
0:00 even though 'playing'. Moving on to Windows Media Player 11, the song
would also stick at 0:00 while 'playing'. I can drag the progress button on
the bar, but without unfreezing playback in either program.
Restarting the pc returns sound BEFORE shutting down. I.e. the Vista
shutdown chirp sounds, then sound is back on restart.
This, and other, problems started while chasing nvidea vidio driver updates,
and one nvidea network driver update. Coincidental problems are failure to
sleep as scheduled and slow ethernet file transfer--only in the same time
period as the sound problem.
I run Nero 7. Support search mentions Nero and DRM file transfers to
portable device, but I didn't see a fit to this problem.
Thank you for reading this.
*As an afterthought, I just opened a song in Nero Showtime. I was also
silent, but the progress bar did move.*
Restarting momentarily,
B