Opening "Recording Devices" and "Playback Devices" creating major issues! Please help! Windows 10

Clancasey

Honorable
Jan 21, 2014
22
0
10,510
Not really sure what category to put this issue under, but figured that sound card would be the closest. So essentially my computer functions fairly normally, 99% of the time I don't notice an issue. I can listen to audio just fine through Spotify or YouTube or whatever, but whenever I try to open "Playback Devices" or "Recording Devices" that's where things get weird. I tried to hop on Discord (it's like Skype, but for gaming, it's basically just a voice chat room) and the microphone worked for like 10 seconds, then all of a sudden stopped working. So I click on "Recording Devices" and the dialog box took about 30 seconds to open. Once it opened it froze completely and wouldn't respond. Now my audio devices don't work, and I think it happened after trying to open the recording devices dialog. I restarted my computer and tried again, to test my suspicions, and the same thing occured. I tried to open recording devices and this time it didn't open up at all and now my playback devices don't work at all either (can't hear anything from my speakers when trying to play music). If I don't try opening playback/recording devices then my speakers work just fine. According to Device Manager all of my drivers are up to date. Additionally, as I try to restart in order to get the devices working again, it turns off the screen after saying "shutting down" and the keyboard and mouse are no longer powered, but it never actually shuts down (fans still run, hasn't shut all the way down) so I'm forced to hard stop it by holding the power button. This only occurs after I start experiencing these issues, and doesn't occur if I don't open the recording devices dialog. This is really frustrating and I'd be very grateful for any help. Thanks so much!

Currently running Windows 10, upgraded from Windows 7. Upgraded a few months back but I only started running in to this issue about a week ago.
 
Solution
do you have anniversary edition of win 10?
right click start
choose run
type "winver" and press enter
Are you on version 1607?

If not, Go here and click update now
this downloads an upgrade assistant that when run, will upgrade you to latest version of Win 10

Simply installing that could fix your problem.

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
search cortana for troubleshoot
choose control panel option
in next window, choose View all from top left menu
Choose Playing Audio troubleshooter and run it until it stops asking for a restart, so may be a few times.

Hardware & Devices troublehooter may help as well.
 

Clancasey

Honorable
Jan 21, 2014
22
0
10,510


Unfortunately, this didn't work :( I can't seem to figure out any solution. Thanks for the response!
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
see if this helps:

right click start button
choose command prompt (admin)
type SFC /scannow and press enter

this scans system files and may fix this behaviour

if it finds corruption it cannot fix, run this in same menu
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

once its run, redo sfc /scannow and restart PC

SFC fixes system files, DISM fixes SFC.
 

Clancasey

Honorable
Jan 21, 2014
22
0
10,510



Thanks for the tip, never knew that one! It said that there were no integrity violations.
 

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
do you have anniversary edition of win 10?
right click start
choose run
type "winver" and press enter
Are you on version 1607?

If not, Go here and click update now
this downloads an upgrade assistant that when run, will upgrade you to latest version of Win 10

Simply installing that could fix your problem.
 
Solution

Clancasey

Honorable
Jan 21, 2014
22
0
10,510


Thanks so much for your continued assistance :) I'm currently on Version 1511 so I'll update now and test to see if it fixed my problem. Thanks!
 

Clancasey

Honorable
Jan 21, 2014
22
0
10,510
AWESOME! This looks like everything works totally fine now, thanks so much! I only had about 15GB left of space on my main drive so I moved a lot of games and stuff over to my other drive so that Windows could update properly, looks like it hasn't updated in a while. Thank you man!