Very strange audio problem

So I've tried to google and answer and not a single person has the same problem I do. It's very strange and it's never happened to me in my life. Now I'm no stranger to software troubles but this one really puzzles me. So for the past couple weeks I've been having this odd audio problem. If I play a song either through Windows Media Player or iTunes, everything will be fine. It's not until another sound from either Facebook IM or BlogTV or YouTube will stop my pause my music! It got really annoying last night when I was talking to somebody on facebook, when ever they sent me a message, my music would stop and I'd have to press play again. When I go to BlogTV.com, it will stop my music while the video on the main page loads. So it seems like when ever there is another audio source via webpage, it will stop the music or radio station I'm listening to on these two programs. I'm using FireFox as a browser

 

Guess I would try to see if the same issues occurred in safe mode with networking.

Could be some recent software install/upgrade that caused this and maybe, just maybe, this approach would reveal that.

 

Windows 7:

Right click on audio icon in sys tray=> choose playback devices
RIGHT click on your (green check) default device=>choose properties
in new dialog window, select enhancements tab
now check the box for "Disable all enhancements".

Test and report back.

 

I only have 'disable all sound effects' but that didn't work. It's definitely a Firefox thing. I tested it with Internet Explorer and I didn't get the same problem. I posted under the Mozilla Support to see if they can help as well.

 

Try disabling or deleting (uninstalling) and reinstalling any firefox plugins or extentions that have to do with audio or video. You could also uninstall firefox completely, clean your registry and then reinstall from scratch. You can write down all your addons to make redoing them easy enough. Try not to use conflicting addons that battle each other for control of your speakers. Remember, Windows is in control when your playing music on the desktop, listening to the radio (which is not windows controlled) would be a firefox job too.

 

We just noticed the same problem on my wife's laptop running Vista, it is not apparent when freshly booted up and logged in but ONLY when she goes on her Facebook and (happens to be playing Zynga Poker) using either IE or Firefox you will hear someone talking in the background, sometimes sounds like a lecture, or a tv commerical.

I did notice when she had IE 8 running, in the task manager that there was at leat 8 instances of iexplorer.exe. I killed a few of them and this background talking audio goes away. I did not get to that level of diagnosis when it happened with Firefox running.

Lastnight I upgraded that laptop to Windows 7 and this still occurs. I have scanned with updated Spybot and AVG (free) and they found nothing.

I have her running Firefox right now, logged in with MY FaceBook profile, playing Zyna Poker and so far no background talking audio. Lets see if it occurs, or my deduction will be "it is something to do with her Facebook account only".

p.s. Either way, I will run the gammit with the malware/virus recommendations on this forum @ http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35407

Will report back later on both fronts,

kP

 

Greetings, kpaull.

Good plan, and good info. When you get the clean seal of approval, start a new thread in this (software) forum, describing your symptoms and/or solutions.

Welcome to MG! :major