Skip to main content

laptop - Windows 7, sound is intermittently dropping

I have a Windows 7 laptop, a Toshiba Satellite Pro C650 (Conexant HD audio - don't know the exact chipset). I've just put it back into service for the kids to watch movies on after several months in storage.


Intermittently, the sound just dies. This can be after a few minutes, or as little as a few seconds. If I bring up the mixer, the sound level meter still shows that there is a sound signal there from whatever sources are outputting, as well as a signal in the main volume meter. There's just no sound coming out of the speakers.


I first figured out that putting the computer to sleep and waking it temporarily fixed it. The audio source didn't need to be shut down for this. I could leave, say, a YouTube video playing when I put it to sleep, and when I woke it up, the video would continue playing, but the sound would have returned.


I've since discovered that simply adjusting the volume, either up or down, in the Windows mixer will also bring the sound back. This really points to a software problem to me, so that's the assumption that I'm working with.


I've tried updating the Intel chipset drivers, and the audio driver. Both of these installed properly with no errors, actually updated the drivers in the device manager, and no errors show on their respective devices. Neither update has fixed the problem, though. I've updated Windows with all the missing updates from its time in storage, which made no difference.


I don't know if it was doing this before it was stored, or not, as it wasn't me that was using it, but I didn't hear anything from the user about audio problems, so I'm assuming (I know....never trust the user) that it didn't.


I've also run sfc (no problems found) and sigverif (no unsigned drivers found).
Both Windows Audio and Windows Audio Endpoint Builder services are running without problems, and no errors at all show up in the Windows event log.


I've updated the BIOS to the latest version from Toshiba's website, again with no effect.


I've backed it up, then done a factory restore to the original Toshiba configuration, and it seems like it might be lasting longer on average now, but it still drops sound after a while, and it's still brought back immediately simply by adjusting the volume in the Windows mixer.


Incidentally, it has to be the main volume that's adjusted, not the individual channel/sound source volume.


I'm still thinking it seems like a software problem, because I don't see how adjusting the volume would somehow reset the hardware to make it work again, but I also don't see how a reinstall wouldn't fix the software problem, if it was that. Unless, of course, it's a problem with Toshiba's implementation of the driver, and I haven't tried a non-Toshiba one, yet.


Things I haven't done yet, but plan to before throwing in the towel:




  • Audio driver from somewhere other than Toshiba's site.




  • Anything (well...not anything) you guys suggest.




Does anybody have any ideas to check that I haven't listed? I'm sure somebody must have run across something similar, but I'm also sure that it's a pretty rare problem.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

How do I transmit a single hexadecimal value serial data in PuTTY using an Alt code?

I am trying to sent a specific hexadecimal value across a serial COM port using PuTTY. Specifically, I want to send the hex codes 9C, B6, FC, and 8B. I have looked up the Alt codes for these and they are 156, 182, 252, and 139 respectively. However, whenever I input the Alt codes, a preceding hex value of C2 is sent before 9C, B6, and 8B so the values that are sent are C2 9C, C2 B6, and C2 8B. The value for FC is changed to C3 FC. Why are these values being placed before the hex value and why is FC being changed altogether? To me, it seems like there is a problem internally converting the Alt code to hex. Is there a way to directly input hex values without using Alt codes in PuTTY? Answer What you're seeing is just ordinary text character set conversion. As far as PuTTY is concerned, you are typing (and reading) text , not raw binary data, therefore it has to convert the text to bytes in whatever configured character set before sending it over the wire. In other words, when y...
Post a Comment
Read more

linux - Extract/save a mail attachment using bash

Using normal bash tools (ie, built-ins or commonly-available command-line tools), is it possible, and how to extract/save attachments on emails? For example, say I have a nightly report which arrives via email but is a zip archive of several log files. I want to save all those zips into a backup directory. How would I accomplish that? Answer If you're aiming for portability, beware that there are several different versions of mail(1) and mailx(1) . There's a POSIX mailx command, but with very few requirements. And none of the implementations I have seem to parse attachments anyway. You might have the mpack package . Its munpack command saves all parts of a MIME message into separate files, then all you have to do is save the interesting parts and clean up the rest. There's also metamail . An equivalent of munpack is metamail -wy .
Post a Comment
Read more

performance - Single Threaded Qaud Core v.s Hyper-Threading Dual Core

Let's say we have two CPUs, One is Quad Core 3.2 Ghz with 4 Cores, and We have a Dual Core 3.2 Ghz with 2 Cores with 2 threads in each Core (Hyper-Threading). My assumption as a programmer will be, the 4 cores 4 threads should perform faster than 2 cores 4 threads since the second CPU needs to switch between threads in order to emulate 4 cores while the first one doesn't need to perform such switching as each core can perform independently and individually. I want to confirm that my assumption is true, if not please explain why one is better than the other. Answer I do believe thats true - since hyper threading does share some elements - specifically the main execution resources, you'll be able to run 4 full threads at once, rather than waiting for those resources to be freed up. The point of HT is to get better performance with a smaller use of die area - your quad core would generally be a bigger chip - say almost twice as large, than a non HT dual core chip, while a HT...
Post a Comment
Read more

freeze - How do I stop windows 8.1 from freezing when the screen locks

This happens to me on a regular basis if I leave the computer for upwards of 10 minutes. It didnt do so at first but started after a couple of days. This is possibly related to further windows updates although nothing seems to tie in obviously when looking at my update history. I have to hold the power button in to power off. If the screens have switched off aswell they wont come back on, if they haven't I see the login picture and can move the mouse pointer but nothing happens and no combination of keyboard mashes or mouse clicks lets me see the login prompt. In the event log (type event viewer into the start menu) under system before every Critical problem (me powering down the machine without restarting) I get distributedCOM errors talking about this guid: "The server {BF6C1E47-86EC-4194-9CE5-13C15DCB2001} did not register with DCOM within the required timeout." I also get the same error for this 1B1F472E-3221-4826-97DB-2C2324D389AE. This seems to be a common theme and...
Post a Comment
Read more