Audio auto-muting & video player auto-stopping

[Godsninja]

Hi everyone! This is my first time on here. I was referred to this site a while ago from someone on TomsHardware and bookmarked it, but only recently felt the need to register. I have a PC problem, and it's exactly as the title says...actually, I have a PC problem, and it's driving me NUTS. I even posted me problem on TomsHardware and not a single soul replied, so, here goes.

SHORT: The problem is in the title. Audio has a mind of it's own and keeps muting and auto-muting, almost looking like an attempt to make me lose my mind. Video players are also stopping on their own. Seems like a possible relation.

Ever since about a week ago, the audio has been automatically muting and un-muting itself, for no apparent reason. I checked all the drivers, they all came back up-to-date. I disabled all the audio drivers 1 by 1, and re-enabled them. I checked for virus's (even though I don't use the browser on my PC that much) and it came back clean. I disconnected all the cables going into the PC and restarted my PC each time after trying to fix the problem. I updated all of the optional windows updates. Some time after all these tries, the problem stopped. It stopped after I updated my anti-virus I think, not too sure, but I was just trying a bunch of things. This is why it's driving me crazy; sometimes it mute and un-mutes within an interval of a few seconds, other times many minutes, and recently stopped muting altogether after doing random things that usually are "just incase" things, as if a computer won't start up without a keyboard, which is bull, mine does. So ya, it stopped after doing a couple unimportant things.

A day or so afterwards, my video player kept stopping the movies I was trying to watch. It happened with VLC and with windows media player, with different files, at different times on the same files. I didn't feel like frustrating myself so I left it. The next day, sometime today or yesterday, I was playing CSS, and the sound auto-muted again...

So I did some MORE google searches and clicked on a few links that I've seen a few days earlier. The problem looked different than mine but I decided not to be picky. It talked about registry errors. So about an hour after, I had the lightbulb come over my head and I decided I'd use CCleaner to fix the errors and clean up the garbage. I haven't use it in a while.

Even though I saw some audio errors, after the restart my computer audio system still had a mind of it's own.
Can somebody please help me?

[Godsninja]

bump

[El Heggunte]

Probably the Windows registry was ROYALLY-screwed. In cases like that, only a clean re-install of the operating system can fix your current problems. Next time, also be very careful about what you install on your machine. I recommend you DON'T use the automagic updates, DON'T install an antivirus, BUT use a decent (non-Micro$oft) and lightweight firewall instead. DON'T install "codec packs". DON'T use Internet Explorer. DON'T install Google Chrome (prefer Chromium or anything equivalent, if you like that poorly-designed interface so much).

Hope this helps.

P.S.: Equally possible, a hardware problem, that is to say, maybe the sound card is dying.

[Godsninja]

Thank you very much for replying! Just FYI, I use Mozilla Firefox, I agree, I can't stand Google Chromes interface!
Both possibilities seem very possible. First I'd like to ask you what you mean by:

I recommend you DON'T use the automagic updates

what is automagic updates? Like windows update? How else can I update my system so easily?

...I still surf the web a biiit, so I would want some sort of defense, I'm thinking AVG, but which light firewall do you recommend that won't bother the living crap out of me?

Also, in response to:

P.S.: Equally possible, a hardware problem, that is to say, maybe the sound card is dying.

I don't have a dedicated sound card, but could my graphics card or my motherboard be related to the sound problems?


I HAVE had some hardware like issues in the past that magically solved themselves. I'm also having artifacts pop up while using VLC, and sometimes VLC crashes too.

I happened to save some notes about my hardware issues and I'll share them (maybe this is related). Events are in timely order:

-Date and time were all messed up
-When I put the PC to sleep, it didn't wake up
-When I started it, it was in an early restart loop
-Now there are no signs of power
-After I reseated everything, restart loop continued
-After I reseated everything, and had my neighbor connect a mouse, keyboard, and monitor, PC started fine and problem was gone

Also..there is the fact that my copy of windows isn't real. I know I know, I just want to cover all of the bases. Maybe all of my problems are a result of the fake windows?