Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: BlackDove on November 07, 2006, 07:39:03 pm
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This just started happening today.
Very... very strange.
Generic Host Process Win32 dies, but in sort of a strange way. It seems to go after my directsound. Now, nothing else is afflicted, everything runs normally, and if I go into winamp or foobar and change the output to my hardware soundcard, i can play music on the said players.
However, downside is I can't play a video with the sound for some reason, even when I change the output in my players. When I reboot, everything works as it should be for a number of minutes, 5 to maybe 10, and then it dies again. The problem, when I go into sound devices, is that it's all grayed out (as opposed to before the fatal exception occurs, when i have a choice on which sound output i want to choose). This tells me that even if I got a PCI soundcard (this one's a ****ty motherboard one - but it still worked fine for a full year since I bought the rig), I'd still be ****ed due to the fact that it's just that, all grayed out, and that I wouldn't be able to choose anything that works, even though it's obviously there.
I've tried everything I knew. Spybot/Three different virus scans, they all come up empty. I tried installing the latest DirectX since that comes with DirectSound. Re-installing the sound drivers. No dice on anything.
Basically in order to watch videos now, I reboot, open my videos while it still works, and then minimize them. Even after it fatals, they still work like everything is okay. But if I try to launch them again, I'll get the "can't find a codec for stream" error, and the videos will play just fine except without any sound.
Also I guess it's worth mentioning that as a result, all YouTube and Google videos don't have sound as well. First I noticed that the sound wasn't there today was when I was checking out Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories on YouTube. It was all downhill from there.
To me, it looks like I'm proper ****ed, and that the only answer from here on is a format. But if anyone wants to share any sage knowledge, you're very welcome to try.
Two images are of my sound device thinger. Everything's in Swedish here, but you get the point, we all have the same **** under our Control Panel. The way yours looks, is the way mine looks before the **** fatals (Just still in Swedish).
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I think I've had that problem before.
Try a different pair of speakers. Mine only seemed to do that when Windows was having trouble finding the speakers, or when the speakers themselves were screwed up.
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Wouldn't that be kind of odd? I mean my headphones have worked for quite some time now without any problems.
I guess I could try jacking my speakers into the slot and see what happens though. However it's doubtful that'll work. I'll post the result.
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Thats an odd problem...
Couple of long shot things to check.
1) I know you've already tried to remove and reinstall the drivers. Lets do it a slightly different way if you haven't done this already. Go into the Device Manager via Control Panel and remove the device completely. Also check to see if there are any unidentified pieces of hardware in the device manager. See if that helps at all.
2) Open up the case, make sure there isn't too much dust on your motherboards south/north bridge chips. I guess its possible that its overheating after a few minutes of use (it really shouldn't) and thus causing the error in the drivers.
3) Completely remove the whole set of motherboard drivers (not sure if you've got a nForce board or what but remove all related motherboard drivers) and then reboot and reinstall the drivers that way and see if helps.
Long shots I know....it may be time for a reformat as you say.
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I did the dust thing. Didn't help, same time frame for it to die.
One thing the DirectX did was allow YouTubes and Google Videos to now play the sound instead of... not.
Video files are still ****ed though. The FFDshow or whatever the hell kind of codec communicates with the sound part, it's not working.
Yeah, I'll try to do the removing of the device from the manager.