Yesterday I was annoyed to find that my computer had stopped making sound. I checked the speakers to see if they’d been unhooked somehow, but they were fine. And I noticed that they still made a “thuwmp” sound when I turned it on. My next thought was perhaps there was something wrong with the audio driver, though it’d never been a problem before.
And I was right. I installed the new driver, and sound returned.
But why did the old driver stop working? Did it become corrupt? Or did it somehow expire? The second question sounds conspiracy-theoryish to me- like the drivers’ manufacturer is somehow screwing up your system remotely- but I have noted that the last 2 times I’ve had problems with the video card drivers and this time too, it’s been within a month of new drivers being released without my notice…still probably coincidence, right?
Sometimes a driver will be overwritten. There are different versions of drivers with the same name. I’ve had printer drivers and R/W CDs have their drivers replaced when new programs were installed.
This is probably not going to sound like a very good answer but I work in IT and I have to deliver this news to people all the time. Computers are very complex devices with software written by different people having different skill levels and different motivations at different times. Almost all complex software has bugs no matter how well tested and thought through. When you combine various pieces of software having flaws sometimes shit happens. There is no other way to put it.
I have no doubt in my mind that Microsoft is trying to plug all the holes in Windows XP (a pretty good OS that is running 5 years old) but we still here about major security holes and other things every other week.
Most pieces of software like drivers require everything to be just the way that they expect every second of the day. When something unexpected happens, they break.
Drivers are never set to expire. It would require an expert effort to figure out why it broke. However, it happens to people all of the time. Reasons could include a virus or a another software installation that conflicted with the driver. Corruption of the file through either hardware or software is possible too.
This may sound stupid but are they wired into the computer the right way round? Do you have a subwoofer or something you need to turn on? Have you accidentally selected mute in the sound driver properties?
I’ve written device drivers for computers. It could be a lost interrupt. Interrupts can get lost when the computer is overloaded or because of hardware/software bugs. An interrupt is the device’s way of telling the operating system that it has finished a task or that an error has occurred. The device driver may think that the device is busy and unable to accept new requests because it hasn’t received an interrupt telling it that the device has completed the previous task.
A reboot will solve a lost interrupt. And, frankly, I don’t think I’ve heard of lost interrupts happening in modern PCI hardware all that often. The problem here is almost certainly some piece of spyware/malware changing a system DLL so that the higher level bits of the driver no longer worked well with the system. A newer install (or even reinstall of the same driver) would’ve assured that all the required DLLs are the right version and fixed the sound.
The driver manufacturers don’t really have a motive for making you download drivers all the time. PC video is one of the most rapidly advancing fields, with game makers using dozens of different models of cards in hundreds of ways.
Check out the changelog for the drivers next time you update - probably it says something like “Version 4.5.678: Fix z buffer something or other in UltraFoo III, blablabla”, meaning they’ve changed the driver to specifically address problems reported in the latest games. It’s just that by the time you notice it, it’s been noticed and reported by many more, and resolved already.
This is more of a IMHO thing really, but to add to the myriad possibilities, it’s possible some application or game re-set your sound settings to an unworkable state. I fix PCs on a semi-regular basis, and have seen someone have their audio output set to digital or analogue when they had the other type speakers on more than one occasion.
A re-install could conceivably wipe out the incorrect settings.