Frustrating Multimedia problems with Vista

I am having some very frustrating problems with Vista Ultimate. I cannot narrow down the cause, but the result is all the same. The problem starts in three separate programs but affects the entire OS: iTunes, Flash in Firefox, Windows Media Player.

If I pause a video in Windows Media Player, I lose ALL sound on the system. The only way to get it back is to restart WMP. After doing this a few times, I lose sound entirely with the only fix being rebooting the system.

I cannot use iTunes anymore. If I pause a playing song, I cannot unpause it. The song just hangs in the same place...and tada, there is no longer any sound on the system. After restarting iTunes, I can play the song, but there is no sound. The most frustrating thing is this hanging...even if I had sound, I can't play music if the play button doesn't work!

Whenever my system loses sound like this, I also cannot play Flash videos. They will play for about 2-3 seconds and then stop. Of course the videos do not have sound either.

Note that nothing is muted, and I have the sound turned up all the way.

The aggravating thing is when I reboot, the logoff sound plays, but I cannot figure out what is messing with the sound before that point. I have terminated all non-essential programs and services

Has anyone experienced this? Care to shed some light? ;-)

 

Vista codec pack might help
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download5326.html

 

It sounds like a driver or software problem to me. Uninstall your sound drivers from the device manager and Add/Remove Programs (or whatever it's called in Vista) and reboot. Then reload your chipset software/drivers from your motherboard manufacturer and reboot. Then reload your sound drivers. If Vista starts to try to install any drivers for you with some type of Wizard, just cancel and continue doing what you're doing. After reloading the sound drivers, reboot, and hopefully all will be well!

hd2k

 

Thanks, I will definitely try that.

I did make some progress....
I have discovered that *something* is stopping the Windows Audio Service or its parent processes. I was able to restart the service and get the sound back. There is nothing in the event viewer about this though. This refers to the *random* loss of sound.

There is a another predictable recurring problem with iTunes that disables sound (the pause problem I mentioned in my original post). Quitting iTunes fixes the problem in this case. After I stopped using iTunes today, I haven't run into problems with sound or Flash. I also reinstalled Flash.

I doubt this is solved, but it seems that iTunes is somehow messing a lot of stuff up.

 

There have been problems with sound drivers in XP, and many times through driver compatabilty, so I am not surprised to find iTunes getting fuddy, especially in Vista..If youv'e followed Hopperdave's post, then you appear to have more , or, less solved it. As there appears to be a conflict between iTunes and Vista,- worth looking on their website, at faq's.

 

This link showed problems back in february, with iTunes and Vista.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6330913.stm

 

Apparently iTunes might have an update /fix for Vista, the link will not go direct, you will need to go to this link and dig around for it.
Hope it helps.
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/itunesrepairtoolforvista10.html

 

If you navigate to the following,(ipods/iTunes) version 7.2 looks like the latest update.

http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

 

Thanks. I have iTunes 7.2 and I am still having problems. I have read that there are still some problems with Vista and 7.2. Instead of iTunes I am using WinAmp for the time being.

Windows Media Player has the same problem...pausing causes a loss of sound, but the problems seem a lot more severe on iTunes. I will try installing the drivers and see if that helps.