Any computer geeks here?

[brianvds]

I had a weird glitch on the laptop. I have three media players, that up to now have worked perfectly well: Windows Media Player, VLC Media player and RealPlayer.

Well, suddenly Windows Media Player no longer works: "WMP encountered a problem while playing the file." As might be expected from Gatesware, it cannot tell me what the problem is.

VLC Player opens the file and plays it, but there is no sound. YouTube videos do the same: they look normal but there is no sound.

RealPlayer seems to work normally, though with MP3 files the sound is annoyingly soft, sometimes almost inaudible (not a problem with video files). I have had this same problem with WMP for a long time though.

WMP can still play MIDI files, and system sounds like the little clicks and bells and things still work.

Someone suggested that perhaps I should update VLC player's software, which I did: no luck. I then uninstalled it, and restarted the computer.

Things promptly went from bad to worse: there is now a persistent, massive noise, like a billion amplified cicadas, in the headphone speakers. WMP now opens files without error messages, but instead of music, just the persistent electronic cicada noise.

I can't work out whether this is some sort of software problem, or whether it's the computer's sound card that has given up the ghost.

Any computer geeks with any advice?

[Tweefo]

Sometimes I think there are some build-in bugs that start working after a few years to get you to buy a new computer. Maybe I am a conspiracy buff. I've got a hammer that fix computers if you need..

[Rigil Kent]

VLC Player opens the file and plays it, but there is no sound. YouTube videos do the same: they look normal but there is no sound.

There could be up to 3 controls for volume: a wheel adjuster on your computer, via the keyboard (Shift-F8 or similar, and a mute key), and finally the volume slider on the program itself. Are all three controls open? If you are using earphones, is the jack active? Have you checked that the sound settings in the control panel is hunky-dory?

Rigil

[brianvds]

VLC Player opens the file and plays it, but there is no sound. YouTube videos do the same: they look normal but there is no sound.

There could be up to 3 controls for volume: a wheel adjuster on your computer, via the keyboard (Shift-F8 or similar, and a mute key), and finally the volume slider on the program itself. Are all three controls open? If you are using earphones, is the jack active? Have you checked that the sound settings in the control panel is hunky-dory?

Rigil

As far as I can work out, these controls are all correctly set. Put a different way, the problem started up without me having changed any settings or controls.

I have tried out all the stupid things I could think of, e.g. trying out different head phones, trying out external speakers, etc. etc. Nothing works. Media files open and play, but instead of their normal sound I just get noise - the sound now is something between a helicopter and machine gun stutter. In fact, unless I mute the computers sound, this sound is up non-stop, whether I am playing a media file or not. Same thing happens on YouTube.

[Mandarb]

It might be drivers, something got corrupted or updated incorrectly.
At own risk, as I can't guarantee this won't break anything, but try and uninstall your sound card in Device Manager, reboot and see if it installs itself. If it doesn't, open Device Manager, and scan for hardware changes. It should try and reinstall the audio drivers.

[brianvds]

As it turned out, I managed to solve the problem. There was some or other setting in Windows that I had to change. Apparently it sometimes changes itself and then the user has to manually go in there and change it back.

[Tweefo]

For a short while after boot up my internet is ok, but then I get this   Is this ok or is it some devious third force agent using my computer and internet connection in his plans to take over the world.

[brianvds]

I occasionally get that same thing, though thus far it has tended to resolve itself. I am still struggling though with Chrome pages becoming unresponsive.