Windows 7 Sound Fun

Snork

So I've been getting this bug recently where my sound output will just totally shit out and not work after a mysterious interval of time
no noodling with sound options in the control panel seems to fix it, only a log off and log on (or restart, etc) does. it appears to be conveniently tied to a recent iTunes bug that just started happening: after a while of being open (usually after listening to something and then sitting idle), iTunes will not playback anything i select. it'll act like it wants to play the song, but just sit at 0:00 forever and not advance, even if i skip to somewhere else in the song. sometimes exiting and restarting itunes fixes it, sometimes I need to do the log off/on thing to fix that. I'm assuming they're related because they appeared around the same time, but sometimes I get the general sound loss without even leaving itunes open. Anyone else getting this?

Dehumanized

It is probably the communication settings in Win7. By default, if you receive a "communication" flagged sound (eg. someone sends you a message on Steam and the window doesn't have focus, or someone calls you on Skype), then the volume of other programs running will be lowered. You can alter the default behavior by right clicking on the volume taskbar item, going into "Sounds", then clicking on the Communications tab.

Snork

thanks, i'll try that

Snork

So I thought this problem had gone away but it appears to be getting worse. if I leave iTunes open and not playing music for more than a few minutes, not only will no sounds work but all sound playback freezes at 0:00, including streaming stuff now. what the hell

Draygo

Could be a hard drive issue, run chkdsk?
Check your event log for any odd messages. (right click computer, hit manage).

Essee

I sincerely doubt it's a hard drive problem. What's going on with iTunes refusing to start a song is exactly what happened when my own sound card was considered "busy" to every program due to it having been used in some other program I'd opened before it that apparently liked to set it off. When that occurred, the reason iTunes wouldn't play anything is because it couldn't access my sound card (nor could any other program that wanted to play sound). For example, if I opened Winamp when this problem occurred, I think it would directly tell me that was happening, if I recall correctly. This problem doesn't appear after you run some other program that plays sound in some way, does it? Any random program you always have open before iTunes (make sure to check what programs run on startup if there's nothing obvious you open). If not, is this onboard sound, or do you have a seperate sound card? If you have a seperate sound card, you should try reseating the card into your motherboard. Other than those two possibilities, I can't think of any other troubleshooting at the moment. Do check your event log right after the problem happens; there's probably some sort of error detected when it does that.