Xbox 360 controller (wired) killing my audio

i know that if you have a pair of headphones plugged into the headphone jack that windows will automatically shut off pc speakers and run only the headphones. my guess is that windows recognizes the headset and is doing the same thing.

do your speakers become the default when you unplug your headset?

what do you mean by xbox controller....i dont see how having a gamepad will affect your sound (and you didnt mention one in your description. did you mean an xbox headset by chance?

this is the right category.

When i unplug my headset (uses usb) it does switch to speakers (using jack) so all is happy. But when I plug in the xbox 360 control (yes control no xbox headset) all the sound audio etc just stops. No sound from speakers or headset. The command buttons on my headset still work eg. pause/play, next song (not that I could hear anything...).

Also i checked what I thought showed my defult "sound play back" and "sound recording" by control pannel --> sound and audio --> sounds and that still says my defult is my headset...

Anyway i have currently disabled the xbox control so i can use my headset but that doesnt really solve the problem

no clue.

all i can say is that perhaps windows is thinking the controller is some sort of headset instead of a controller. either that or there is some strange driver issue.

well i no that an xbox control has an ability to plug a xbox headset into it so I agree that windows must think it is a mic but it does not apear in my options in picking my defults  

all i can say is to have some music or other sound playing and open up the audio devices window. you should see sound coming from your speakers. now plug in the controller and see what changes. try clicking back on your speakers and setting them to the default device if you can.

other than that, perhaps you should search for "use xbox controllers on windows (version here)" on google. i'm sure someone made a post about it somewhere on the www.