How to restart audio without rebooting (USB soundcard) - the nasty case

Question

I have a very similar problem to this: Is there a way to restart audio without restarting a Windows 7 computer?

I've got a USB external sound card (Line6 UX1, the older one), the OS is Windows 7 x64.

At a random moment (either when I'm playing a movie or a game) it stops completely.

Variation one: absolutely no sound when playing back anything, but I can edit/playback music without problem through the ASIO drivers (i.e. from Sound Forge).

Variation two: absolutely no sound when playing back anything, and applications using the ASIO driver do not find the external sound card. Flash player freezes all browsers (most ads are now in flash) and also iexplore.exe hungs playing the logoff sound.

I've tried almost everything: getting new drivers, disable/enable sound card through Sound menu (when I trying to disable it, it hangs forever or I cannot even access Sound menu at all!), I have tried even to disable USB management of Power options menu.

My last hope was net stop audiosrv but it went to infinite loop as well (I had enough of it after writing dots on the screen for 5 minutes).

This thing drives me crazy. My hypothesis is that an exception occurs in one of the drivers, that crashes that part of the system. If I could locate that specific process, force kill it and restart, that'd be awesome.

Edit:

I will try to check out this method next time the problem occurs (http://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/show/312-stop-a-hung-service):

1. query the process ID of the audio service: sc queryex audiosrv
2. headshot the process dude: taskkill /f /pid [process ID]

I'll update this question if it works, and provide you a batch file.

Edit 2:

With this solution I could restart the Windows Audio service. It looked fine, until I wanted to play anything with audio. Playing goes for a second and stops (either an mp3 in a player or youtube). So the problem is nastier I thought. I'll check out the grounding issue next. Note: Soundcard still works with the ASIO drivers.

Answer 1

I can suggest you try the following, for what it is worth.

When you open the Device Manager go to View->Devices by connection. After the view changes find the USB HUB where your sound card is plugged in, and try do Disable/Enable it, and see what happens afterwards.

I have used this method to reinitialize USB Stick which I have previously ejected (right click -> eject).

Let me know what you think.

Answer 2

One more possible way to go around: unplug and replug the external sound card. It works for me recently.

Answer 3

USB sound can be lost after PC sleeps or after playing. I found the problem to be caused by a conflict between devices. I fixed the conflict by doing the following:

1. Find 'sound' on control panel.
2. For Windows 10, control panel is found by going to settings and search for control panel in search line.
3. In 'sound', select the sound system you want to be the default. Restart pc and check sound to assure that the default system works...that you can hear sound.
4. Now find Device Manager, then find all lines that say 'Sound', including 'video and sound'.
5. Disable all sound systems except your default by right clicking and choosing disable.
6. Restart the pc, and this should resolve the conflict.

Answer 4

I had the same problem with the Scarlett 2i4 on a dual boot (linux-windows 10) system. When rebooting from linux to windows, the focusrite audio driver was losged but soundless. I solved it partially by disabling the bios usb power option after shutdown (enables charging component when PC is off). But I still have to unplug replug once in a while as suggested by atoth.

Answer 5

I repeatedly have a similar problem and the following worked for me when this happens:

• net stop audiosrv (Will stop the Creative Audio Service as well)
• Go into the device manager and disable the device in Sound, video and game controllers
• net start audiosrv
• Enable the device

Now the sound works again

PS: To automate use https://superuser.com/a/560454/260770

Answer 6

Please check the AudioEndPointBuilder and the PlugPlay Services which form the chain of dependency for AudioSrv. Try stop and restart these two services if the situation becomes dire. If PlugPlay service seems affected change the service properties->Recovery->1st failure to "Restart the service" instead of "restart the computer" and then proceed to stop and start that service. Of course if none of these help, examine the possibility of electrical wiring issues (like no proper grounding etc) which I have seen wreak havoc with Plug and Play problem situations. -- Cheers.