All of the sudden...No sound?

[Oifish]

Randomly I turned my PC on and there was no sound. Itunes wouldn't even attempt to play a song, the timer would sit at 0:00. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the windows high definition audio driver and tried the realtek drivers, but nothing has helped. When trying to play a test sound in sound properties an error states: "Failed to play test tone". I am lost.

This is on another pc than the one in my sig:
Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAKS 320GB 7200 RPM SATA
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
ASUS DRW-24B1ST/BLK/B/AS Black SATA 24X DVD Burner
Thermaltake Silent 1156 CLP0552 92mm CPU Cooler
EDIMAX EW-7128G PCI Wireless Card
GIGABYTE GV-N460OC-1GI GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5
GIGABYTE GA-P55A-UD3
CORSAIR CMPSU-550VX
OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX30GXXX 2.5" 30GB SATA II

 

[IGemini]

Obvious out of the way first: Make sure your audio is set to the proper output and isn't muted. Beyond that, try each of these:

- Stop and restart Windows Audio in Admin Tools -> Services
- In your sound device properties, enhancements tab (I'm assuming this is a Win7 system), check "disable all sound effects" and click OK.
- Try changing the default sound format in the Advanced tab (also in sound device properties).

 

[Oifish]

Obvious out of the way first: Make sure your audio is set to the proper output and isn't muted. Beyond that, try each of these:

- Stop and restart Windows Audio in Admin Tools -> Services
- In your sound device properties, enhancements tab (I'm assuming this is a Win7 system), check "disable all sound effects" and click OK.
- Try changing the default sound format in the Advanced tab (also in sound device properties).

Just tried all of those.....no change. And yes it is Win7 (x64).

 

[Ike0069]

Did Windows install any updates recently that would have been activated with a restart?

I suggest attempting a Windows restore point to when you know the sound worked.

 

[Oifish]

The comp is a new build and this happened just after I activated Win7. I just put in a Creative X-Fi XtremeMusic and disabled the onboard sound......exact same issue. iTunes won't even attempt to play a song and windows still says: "Failed to play test tone". I don't have any restore points before this issue started.

 

[IGemini]

Are you using the provided driver disc or are you downloading drivers from the website? I know that Windows 7 has a recognition problem of the XtremeMusic in the earlier drivers.

 

[Ike0069]

I believe this was a somewhat common problem with Vista, but I think is different. There has been a discussed issue with Windows 7 and realtek audio giving the error you have that have been traced back to a windows update. Not sure if it is only with gigabyte MB's with realtek onboard sound, but that has been an issue I've read about and you are (were) using both. Not sure if this is your issue, but it does sound similar.

Look at this thread from MS answers and see if you can find and disable update KB974571.

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7music/thread/850853d2-eea0-4f53-972d-14515f80554d