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Sound stopped working suddenly

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ashneedshelp Posts 2 Registration date Thursday January 12, 2017 Status Member Last seen February 7, 2017 - Jan 12, 2017 at 09:42 PM
ashneedshelp Posts 2 Registration date Thursday January 12, 2017 Status Member Last seen February 7, 2017 - Feb 7, 2017 at 11:21 AM
I am at a loss. The sound on my laptop (o/s Windows 10) stopped working seemingly out of nowhere. I was watching a movie using VLC and it was fine, left my computer for about 30 mins and came back. The computer did not go into sleep mode or anything at the time. I initially tried to open Netflix though every movie I tried to open was running at an extremely slow frame rate with no sound. I gave up, assuming it was the internet being slow and tried to resume the movie although there was no sound. I tried with and without headphones with no success. I opened YouTube and which was buffering very slow and then wouldn't play. My internet speed was fine.
I tried to update the sound drivers (Conexant High Definition SmartAudio 221 and Windows High Definition Audio Device). I have disabled and re-enabled. I have run virus scans and did general cleaning, restarted the computer multiple times. The troubleshooter doesn't see any problem and the audio device looks as though it is working properly. I don't think it's attributed to upgrading to Windows 10 as I did that almost a year ago. Please help!!!

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Answer 1 / 1
Borius Posts 3 Registration date Monday January 23, 2017 Status Member Last seen February 6, 2017
Jan 23, 2017 at 07:22 AM
Hi! Do you hear sound through the headphones?
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ashneedshelp Posts 2 Registration date Thursday January 12, 2017 Status Member Last seen February 7, 2017
Feb 7, 2017 at 11:21 AM
(sorry, this went into my junk mail)
I did get it solved!!

For anyone else that may have this problem, here's what I found out:

As it turns out, it was directly caused by Windows 10 and automatic updates.
Under Device Manager, both sound devices were noted to "require further installation" under the 'events' tab. When re-stalling the sound devices, they still didn't work. I had to reinstall Windows 10. This time I set my network as a metered connection to inhibit auto updates.

(How to set a metered connection: https://www.howtogeek.com/226722/how-when-and-why-to-set-a-connection-as-metered-on-windows-10/

Once metered I investigated each update that was requesting to be installed and learned that 'Update for Microsoft Windows (KB3199986)' caused a number of issues including audio bugs. I installed the others without issue, but did not install the one with the bugs. If you do not have your system set for metered connection, Microsoft will force updates and it can be a difficult issue to diagnose.

Reference: https://windowsreport.com/windows-10-kb3199986-bugs/

I really hope this helps other people. It took many attempts and few days to get this straightened out!
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