Flash sound stopped working.

December 28, 2009 8:02 PM

Flash sound stopped working in both IE and firefox. I'm using windows 7. This has been driving me crazy for the last week - I think, somewhere along the line, I was running a few anti-malware apps and something may have gotten deleted. There's no sound whatsoever from any kind of flash, be it youtube, lastfm, or a web ad.

Here is what I have tried:

1) Un-installing and re-installing flash 10

2) Un-installing and re-installing Realtek HD drivers (my onboard sound)

3) This thread, which may not be applicable to windows 7.

4) CodecTweak, which has cited a variety of codecs mapped in (3) to be missing, but not msacm32.drv, which apparently is the important one.

5) Everything Adobe has on the subject.

My current thesis is that some codec somewhere has been deleted, but I have no idea which or what codecs flash uses, apparently I have none of them.

Anyone have any ideas??? Thanks in advance.

posted by brocklanders to Technology (7 answers total)

I think this is a trojan/virus. This happened to me and it took a long time to restore sound and get fixed. I had to take it in. Really irritating.
posted by OrangeSoda at 8:30 PM on December 28, 2009

Is it all sound from your browser? Someone may have installed flashmute (note, awesome if you use tabbed browsing) on your computer, or you may have had an adware that used its method as mentioned on the front page of the developers site.
posted by scodger at 8:33 PM on December 28, 2009

Response by poster: @Burhanistan Yep that's what I used

@OrangeSoda Yep, I have run Malwarebytes, Ad-Aware, Spybot, and (grasping at straws) SUPERAntiSpyware. I have tried Combofix but am wary as AVG goes apesh*t when I try to install it.

@scodger Nope, I use adblock.

Also, this is happening on both IE and FF, so I assume it's a flash thing.
posted by brocklanders at 10:27 PM on December 28, 2009

Have you looked at the volume control mixer in windows? It's slightly different in windows 7 as it's got a separate control for each application. So perhaps the java/ie/firefox one has got muted?
posted by kg at 1:23 AM on December 29, 2009

Had similar problems with XP/Firefox. Turned out to be a conflict with the free ZoneAlarm firewall. Had same problem with AVG free but not trial fully featured AVG. Switched to Comodo free and now everything in the garden is rosy.
posted by Dr.Pill at 4:46 AM on December 29, 2009

Response by poster: Uninstalled AVG, nothing but windows firewall running, still no luck.

@kg I wish things were this simple.
posted by brocklanders at 9:05 PM on December 29, 2009

Best answer: I re-installed windows 7 via "upgrade" and that did the trick.
posted by brocklanders at 7:28 PM on January 1, 2010