Help me troubleshoot my video playback

August 12, 2012 2:32 PM

Online videos play with no sound.

I recently began having a problem with my PC where videos will play without sound. This occurs somewhat randomly, and can often be fixed by reloading the video. The video sometimes (but not always) also freezes after a few seconds of silent playing, even though the playback indicator shows that it continues to download/buffer.

When the video plays w/o sound, the Windows sound mixer control does *not* show an audio signal. I have had a video with sound playing fine in one tab and a video with no sound in another, so this is not an intermittent connection or other global issue.

This happens with both HTML 5 and Flash video players, and in both Chrome and Firefox. I updated my video driver (GEForce 7300 SE) to no effect. I am running Windows Vista (I know....). Any thoughts as to possible causes, or ideas for further troubleshooting? I'm stumped.

posted by jpdoane to technology (6 answers total)

This is happening to me as well - maybe it's a Columbus internet issue? I chalked it up to my generally misbehaving computer.
posted by ChuraChura at 4:19 PM on August 12, 2012

Huh. Who's your ISP, Erin? I have AT&T DSL.

I forgot to mention, if it matters, that Netflix streaming works fine.
posted by jpdoane at 4:34 PM on August 12, 2012

I believe we have Time Warner.
posted by ChuraChura at 4:56 PM on August 12, 2012

I updated my video driver (GEForce 7300 SE) to no effect.

Have you updated your sound driver?

And it would probably be worthwhile getting the latest version of Flash.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:26 PM on August 12, 2012

I did think about a sound driver as well, but it seems like that is more integrated into the OS nowadays, rather than having proprietary drivers. Device manager tells me my sound device is a "High Definition Audio Device", (I don't have a sound card, but use whatever is integrated on my motherboard). Windows tells me the driver is up to date.

If it is relevant, I also have a TV capture card installed, though I don't use that for audio or video playback.

I tried updating Flash as well.
posted by jpdoane at 7:45 PM on August 12, 2012

I updated the sound driver fr the motherboard vendor and that fixed it
posted by jpdoane at 10:51 AM on November 21, 2012