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Adobe Flash causes sound to stop working in Windows XP

After playing shockwave flash audio content on websites, the sound will stop working a after a period of time. The amount of time it takes for the sound to stop working is random, but it happens consistently. It affects all sound, not just flash content. I having a hard time finding a process that is causing the problem, but the sound will come back while I log off of the computer (the logoff sound plays), so it seems there is something running that's interfering with audio.

I'm running Windows XP SP3 and the version of Flash is 11.1. I'm using IE8, although the problem occurs with Chrome as well. The motherboard is Intel D865GVHZ with onboard sound (Realtek).

Ideally I would like to know if there's a process that I can kill that will bring the sound back. I'd like to avoid a bunch of software uninstalls/re-installs unless there's a known issue that will be resolved by doing this.

Thanks.

dgofman

You can try installing ProceXP and keep running as restore window.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653

This tool will display all new and dying processes but red and green colors

May be you will find out what process was killed

DaanO

ASKER

Thanks for the suggestion. I had been using process explorer to try to identify what was causing the problem. I just tried your idea of running it while logging off, but unfortunately procexp gets shut down fairly quickly after initiating the log off, and most of the processes are killed after that point. I did notice that the sound is back by the time the Closing Network Connections status box appears, because the logoff sound plays at this time.

dgofman

Can you reproduce the same problems on other machines?

DaanO

ASKER

I have not noticed the behavior on other machines. Unless someone has some idea of a specific cause, I don't think I'm going to get very far.

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dgofman

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DaanO

ASKER

Thanks for the suggestion. I've installed the debugger. Hopefully this will show some error next time the sound dissappears.

DaanO

ASKER

I uninstalled Flash of 11.1 and then installed the debugger version of 11.1. The only error it has reported while listening to Pandora was:

TypeError: Error #1009: Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference.
at wine_300x250b_fla::CompleteAnimation_1/frame235()

Since then then I have not seen that error. Pandora will still occasionally stall in the middle of playing a song, but instead of it killing all of the sound on the computer, it will skip to the next song after a short delay. It seems that either the uninstall/reintall process, or switching to the debugger version has made the problem go away.

DaanO

ASKER

The problem hasn't occurred over the last several weeks. Based on my last comment, it seems that either the uninstall/reinstall of flash, or switching to the debugger version solved the issue.