was wonderin if you all could help me out on a problem that's really startin to tick me off. For reasons I've yet to discover, something has broken with all of my audio. No music files can play, and any video files I open will either just run with video (VLC) generate a worthless error message and crash (WMP) or just won't play (Divx). And it's all extensions, wma, mp3, avi, mkv, ogm, mp4, ect, ect,. If I disable or uninstall the audio driver I can at least open video files without divx or wmv failing, and but once I reinstall it nothing works again. I did a system restore earlier today and that fixed it for several hours, but then it broke again and the only restore option that windows gave me was to undo previous restore. After the first restore there wasn't any thing that I installed or updated or anything similar to crap I was doing before it broke the first time. The driver software is up to date. I'm running windows vista home premium and the audio device is "Realtek High Definition Audio" (whater was built into the laptop (HP pavillion 6500). Any of you guys have ideas on what might be fucked up?
Post Script: WMP gives an error code of : C00D11B1
PPS: it also seems that AIM is no longer working.
PPPS: There is one thing I remember doing yesterday before the first fail and today before the second, that being launching Avast anti-virus in order to put in the product key (I've been needing to get one for the free version for a while and I finally did last night since it bugs me on every startup). the first time put the key and and later when I noticed the audio failing I ran a scan and was clean. After the system restore I just opened it up but had to get into my e-mail to get it, decided I didn't fell like going into me e-mail so I just closed it. I'm not exactly sure why launching that program would decimate my audio. I've since uninstalled every aspect of Avast just in case but my shit is still broke.
If you undo the previous restore, then it will let you restore back to the first point again.
From what you mention, it does sound like Avast may be causing your problem. I'd suggest undoing the restore, redoing the restore, then uninstalling Avast and installing another free antivirus such as AVG. If that fixes it, it's Avast. If that doesn't fix it, then maybe you'll notice something else that breaks it.
Only good news I can think of is that it's obviously not a hardware problem if a system restore fixes it, even if only temporarily.
In reply to dingolord, #2: I've tried the undo restore, but that just takes me back to where I first tried restore to fix the problem, so I'm still in the same problem. I'd restore to an older date, but Vista decided it didn't need to keep restore points after I did it the first time. The only thing I havn't tried is poking around while in safe mode, but I realized that wasn't an option cause I'm using my laptop which has a busted screen, so I won't be able to see the boot menu (luckily windows auto detects the VGA). I just did try a second undo restore and all that managed to do was take me back to the point before I uninstalled avast.
The undo restore takes you back to before you first restored, but then you should be able to restore again to the point you restored to last time, which you said fixed the problem until you opened Avast.
Wow that sentence is confusing. I can't think of a bettery way to say it, though.
You can mimic safe mode without the boot menu, if you want to try some things. Start > Run > msconfig. On the General tab, choose "Diagnostic Startup", click OK, and reboot. Almost exactly the same as Safe Mode (a couple more drivers and services load in Diagnostic than do in Safe Mode, mostly network stuff).
I didn't have any restore points where it wasn't broken, windows trashed them all. The problem did resolve though, I found one more audio control panel and when it launched it fixed the problem itself, making me feel really stupid, though aim is still busted, but that's minor. thanks for the help though.
