No sound when bootup sometimes?

Hey guys,

I am having a small issue and was wondering if anybody had any ideas on it. Sometimes when I bootup I have no sound like playing a mp3 or similar. I goto the sound properties and I see movement in the graph just no sound through the headset.

Now usuall if I reboot the sound kicks in and all is well. I tried moving the soundcard up a slot asnd it still does it, could this Creative SoundBlaster Z card be fading out or on the fritz?

This is so not my wheelhouse. But if the levels graph shows sound then the card is driving sound. The issue would seem to be downstream at the jack or headphone.

hmmm that is what I was thinking too but maybe next time I will mess with the plug?

I find it rather unlikely that this would be a faulty connection on the analog side of things because a) that wouldn’t get fixed so reliably by rebooting and b) you usually get crackling noises when you apply any kind of movement.

The most likely culprit would be windows using another audio interface, but it seems you have ruled that out. Quite odd indeed. Have you had a peek in the event log to see if something audio related sticks out?

And just to be sure, your headset connects to your soundcard via stereo jack, it’s not one of those usb thingamajigs, right? Does your headset have a builtin amplifier (does it need any kind of power source to function)?

no the headset is a analog connectors 1 for the mic and 1 for the speakers… no amp or powersource pretty straight through connection…

I will check the logs…

well I looked in the logs but was not sure where I should focus my attention in the logs?? but I didn’t see anything about sound

The other day my neighbor approached me because her mobile phone stopped making sounds from one minute to the next.

Long story short: It turned out to be a drop of water in the headphone jack, which fooled the phone into thinking a headphone is attached.

Moral of the story: Check all your headphone jacks, they can also be switches that your sound card uses to determine where to direct the output.

Do you have any usb sound devices like headphones … that way you could narrow down the search a bit …

welll I have a Reverb G2. will that help?

Give it a throw … if you get constant sound it means your sound card has good output and drivers are good… then it could be a motherboard audio port problem

I have a discrete soundcard. it is a creative soundblaster Z

Ah… thought it was onboard sound card

yes that is ok. I just don’t know why it does what it does…

Kind of a shot in the dark but have you checked if there are any updated drivers for your card?

I am using the latest… thnx tho :wink:

This is starting to actually sound like a firmware/hardware issue. Can you switch to an onboard sound card just to see if anything similar happens?

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well I could try as differnt version of the software for the soundcard.

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Well looks like it was a software issue. I had installed an older driver and not had a problem since I installed it 3 days ago…

There was a small update on the new software maybe I will try reinstalling the newer software and try that update they pushed through creative update…

Thank you everybody no need to get a new sound card…

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