HELP!: Weird Win7 sound issue

[larryinc64]

This keeps happening to me,
I'm working in Premiere CS3 on a Power Plaid episode, I have Photoshop CS3, iTunes, and FireFox open. All of a sudden the sound on my PC no longer works, It is not muted but nothing plays, and flash player wont work correctly. YouTube videos attempt to play but after a second it goes to the static error image YT videos do. WMP displays this error when attempting to play:

Windows Media Player cannot play the file because there is a problem with your sound device. There might not be a sound device installed on your computer, it might be in use by another program, or it might not be functioning properly.

And ALL OF THIS GETS FIXED if I close all the programs, it begins to work fine. It happens when my PC is running a lot of programs, I had it happen during a stream with Skype, OBS, Terraria, and Firefox open.

It is currently doing this, but I can't close Firefox due to a video uploading.

I have no idea whats wrong.

[tiamaxwell]

It's hard to say for sure but next time it happens close the programs one by one waiting in-between to see what program is causing it. once you think you have an idea test it till your sure and we can go from there. Just to cover bases I would also look for updates to all programs and the drivers.

[palmer6strings]

I've got quite a bit of experience with sound issues. I play and record a lot of music and the programs I have to run always fight over the sound driver. Microsoft did a horrible job of how the audio driver gets used and how it's routed to work with programs. Apple did a very good job on writing their code and how to make their audio drivers work. (Go figure)
Though this may not be the case for you, definitely make sure you check your sound driver and it's settings. If they look all right, try to download and install ASIO4ALL. That could possibly fix your problem but it may not also. What it does is bypasses parts windows audio control so you can run the audio in your programs programs with less latency.

I will tell you now, that I think you are running to many programs that are fighting over audio causing a bunch of latency so you audio will kinda go nuts and not work correctly.

Worst case scenario is that your audio card may be going bad and cannot handle the heavy load anymore.

[larryinc64]

It just happened again, and I did the 'close one at a time and check' thing and it was FireFox!