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mattbrowne's avatar

Weird sound problem on my PC - When playing MP3 files why is there no sound every couple of months?

Asked by mattbrowne (31735points) November 30th, 2009

I’ve got an older PC with XP running just fine except for one thing. Originally I was just using MS Media Player to listen to MP3 songs.

After a couple of years suddenly no more sound from Media Player. When logging in there was still the familiar Windows sound. In some online forum somebody suggested Winamp. I installed it and the sound was back and it was okay for a year or so.

Then magically the same thing happened again. No more sound from Winamp. And still none from Media Player. In some online forum somebody suggested jetAudio Player. Same procedure as every year and the sound was back. For a while.

In another online forum somebody suggested installing a newer Realtek AC97 driver, which I did. After installing and rebooting nothing changed. No sound. At the time I didn’t know about Fluther yet.

Well, it seems that only installing some new media player software can fix this strange problem.

What can I do to get my sound back for all media players?

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9 Answers

J0E's avatar

When you say “older” how old are we talking?

J0E (13172points)“Great Answer” (1points) Flag as…
J0E's avatar

Might be time for a new one.

J0E (13172points)“Great Answer” (0points) Flag as…
mattbrowne's avatar

Oh, I got a newer one but in different room. And my 2004 PC got a lot of stuff on it and I hate to redo all the installations. For travel I use a notebook, but hardly at home. There must be a way to fix this sound thing, right?

mattbrowne (31735points)“Great Answer” (0points) Flag as…
jrpowell's avatar

This is really strange.

Try this http://www.foobar2000.org/

If that works while the others don’t something weird is going on.

jrpowell (40562points)“Great Answer” (1points) Flag as…
mattbrowne's avatar

@johnpowell – Thanks. I downloaded foobar2000 v0.9.6.9 and it works. For how long? Winamp and jetAudio Player still don’t work. Maybe the Foobar Player is more robust.

I googled the problem for hours. If you type in

suddenly no sound windows xp

you get 39 million results. A lot of people seem to have this problem. None of the advice I found was useful. Many comments are just about making sure the cables of the loudspeaker are plugged in or the sound isn’t turned off. Stuff like that. And installing newer drivers of course. Something weird is going on.

mattbrowne (31735points)“Great Answer” (0points) Flag as…
dpworkin's avatar

You may find that VLC solves these problems. It is the default player for many sophisticated users on various platforms.

dpworkin (27090points)“Great Answer” (1points) Flag as…
jrpowell's avatar

You could try iTunes too. It uses Quicktime to process audio so it might be better to avoid what is hosing your audio output.

jrpowell (40562points)“Great Answer” (1points) Flag as…
mattbrowne's avatar

Thanks, guys!

mattbrowne (31735points)“Great Answer” (0points) Flag as…

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