Weirdest Issue Yet: Music will not play using internet browsers!?!

[Aiken_Drumn]

Ok. So for the last hour, suddenly, there is no noise coming from my speakers when its from something on the internet. Chrome, Edge, it doesn't matter. There still is the "speaker" symbol within the tabs to show sound is being produced!

If I open a video on my PC, however, it plays fine! If I slide my volume it pings as usual..

Help!

 

[Quintillus]

Try right-clicking the speaker icon in the taskbar next to the clock, and choosing "Open Volume Mixer". This lets you adjust volume levels on a per-application basis, so e.g. if one application is too quiet you can turn it up, or vice versa. You can verify that the browser isn't set to zero this way (it may be necessary to have it attempting to play sound for it to show up in the volume mixer).

The leftmost column, "Device" also has a dropdown, and if you change the device there, it will show applications that are assigned to that device. This suggests that it's possible to have some applications going to one device (set of speakers, TV, etc.) and others going to another. I don't know how you change which device a program is assigned to. But if your browser is assigned to a device that isn't currently plugged in/turned on, that would also explain what you are observing.

Beyond that? Never hurts to run a Malwarebytes scan, just in case. It does sound like an odd case.

 

[Aiken_Drumn]

Annoyingly it was one of those "have you turned it off" fixes. I really need to learn that "restart" and "Shut Down" have different functionality. I can never remember which actually hard resets a computer.

 

[leif erikson]

You can turn off a feature called fast start up and shut down will be equivalent to restart.

Article explaining it all is here.

 

[Aiken_Drumn]

Thanks Leif, I'll look into that.