Audio driver issue, please help

[snoopy190496]

I've been using Win7 for years with no issue at all, switched to Win10 few weeks ago and shit happened. I'm having severe problem with audio drivers, spent almost all of my free time in last 2 weeks trying to fix it, installing numerous versions of drivers, and then uninstalling them after a bitter dissapointment. When i turn on my PC everything is fine for few hours (today is the worst, happening every 10 minutes aprox.), and then my youtube videos just stop, showing only fullscreen thumbnail with play button and endlessly buffering. After 3-4 minutes video starts but without sound. When this occurs it's the same on all the other websites ( tried 9GAG, Reddit, Facebook, Vimeo) all the media, GIFs, videos, audio, all media is taking forever to load, and doesn't work properly. Tried playing some movies with BS Player, it crashes instantly. Then usually i restart my PC and it's perfect again until problem occurs once again. Problem is present across all available web browsers. Tried installing Adobe Flash player, Shockvawe player, nothing helped. Chrome is my default browser. My motherboard is MSI Z170A gaming pro. I used Realtek HD audio drivers on Win7 and they worked perfectly with my (weird?) speaker setup, I'll include my PC specs below, and shitty paint drawing that explains how my speakers are connected even though I don't think it matters. I tried latest Realtek drivers, problem is there. I tried installing Realtek drivers from CD that i got with motherboard, problem is there. But when uninstalling all Realtek drivers and using default Windows driver, problem didn't occur, but there is a catch. Sound is stereo only, meaning that only my front speakers work, and there is buzzing in my rear and central speakers, as well in subwoofer. Even though in Windows sound settings it recognizes my setup as 5.1 only front speakers produce sound. I tried changing sampling rate, tried both 'Audio Endpoint' and 'Generic software device' drivers in Device manager. Tried disabling XMP in my BIOS (beacuse I found it as solution on some forum) that also didn't help.

And now about how my speakers are connected. I'm using Sony stereo speakers, Logitech 5.1 system, and another 1.1 set of speakers (1 subwoofer and 1 central speaker).Sony stereo and front speakers from Logitech system are connected through a 3.5mm splitter, so these 4 speakers are FRONT.Central speaker and subwoofer from Logitech system and the other central and subwoofer are also connected through a 3.5mm splitter, and you guessed it, they are CENTRAL AND SUB.As for the rear speakers there are only rear speakers from Logitech system.This setup worked great on Win7, and works when I was using Realtek drivers perfectly on my current Win10 system until i discovered that problem lays in those same drivers.

PC specs:

CPU: i5-6500 @3.20GHz

Motherboard: msi Z170A GAMING PRO

GPU: nVidia GeForce GTX 970 WindForce 4GB

RAM: 2x4GB HyperX Fury DDR4

https://imgur.com/a/S92Vi6i

 

[Ralston18]

Three things:

1) Please watch your language. Problem(s) are frustrating I know but this is a family friendly Forum.

2) Use Reliability History to check for error codes or warnings just before or at the time of the "stops" and "buffering"

3) Use Resource Monitor to watch what your system is doing. Open right after boot up and slide the window to one side. Then do things as you normally do while watching Resource Monitor. See what is happening when there are "stops" and buffering".

Task Manager may also be useful. Keep an eye on what else may be running in the background. May simply be some buggy app trying to "phone home". Or a corrupted update process.

 

[snoopy190496]

Three things:

1) Please watch your language. Problem(s) are frustrating I know but this is a family friendly Forum.

2) Use Reliability History to check for error codes or warnings just before or at the time of the "stops" and "buffering"

3) Use Resource Monitor to watch what your system is doing. Open right after boot up and slide the window to one side. Then do things as you normally do while watching Resource Monitor. See what is happening when there are "stops" and buffering".

Task Manager may also be useful. Keep an eye on what else may be running in the background. May simply be some buggy app trying to "phone home". Or a corrupted update process.

Thank you for your response.

1) As non-native english speaker I truly apologize for my cussing. Learned english through movies and online gaming without any filters so subconsciously using swear words instead of polite language is one of my flaws. Nonsarcastic question: is 'crap' acceptable as family friendly?

As for 2) and 3): To be honest I never used Reilability History nor Resource Monitor so I don't really understand what I'm looking at. Should I post some screenshots with highlighted periods of "stops" and "buffering" for you to analize?

 

[Ralston18]

1) No problem. Not at all uncommon. "Crap" is generally acceptable. Overall, profanity has been pushing the rules in daily use. Best to avoid (personal opinion) using profanity in general conversation overall. And that includes acronyms - some of them are headline stuff now. Six year old's using "WTF" does not bode well....

2) & 3) Reliability History, Resource Monitor (along with Event Viewer and Task Manager) are tools to help narrow down problems.

Clicking the red circles and yellow triangles, for example, will provide more information about what happened and when. The difficulty is that the provided details often include some vague alphanumeric code that may cover any number of possible problems.

Still look for the code(s) or code(s)/patterns that seem to match or otherwise correspond with the problems your Windows 10 system is having.

Then google the codes and narrow the search as much as you can. See what information turns up.

Do, for the most part, avoid sites that offer to download and fix any given problem. Most of those sites show up no matter what problem you have.

Look thorough the tools and see what you can find. Feel free to post screenshots that show some common factor or pattern.

I may not spot something but there are other folks who might. That is fine with me.

 

[bulimichal]

Easy fix just download https://www.iobit.com/en/beta/db6/download.php and update every driver that's missing with this program. If audio still not working then click on tools and there will be fix audio problems

 

[snoopy190496]

1) No problem. Not at all uncommon. "Crap" is generally acceptable. Overall, profanity has been pushing the rules in daily use. Best to avoid (personal opinion) using profanity in general conversation overall. And that includes acronyms - some of them are headline stuff now. Six year old's using "WTF" does not bode well....

2) & 3) Reliability History, Resource Monitor (along with Event Viewer and Task Manager) are tools to help narrow down problems.

Clicking the red circles and yellow triangles, for example, will provide more information about what happened and when. The difficulty is that the provided details often include some vague alphanumeric code that may cover any number of possible problems.

Still look for the code(s) or code(s)/patterns that seem to match or otherwise correspond with the problems your Windows 10 system is having.

Then google the codes and narrow the search as much as you can. See what information turns up.

Do, for the most part, avoid sites that offer to download and fix any given problem. Most of those sites show up no matter what problem you have.

Look thorough the tools and see what you can find. Feel free to post screenshots that show some common factor or pattern.

I may not spot something but there are other folks who might. That is fine with me.

Thank you for your kindness, and responses sir!
I spent whole last night researching Reliability History and after some time I was able to identify the problem. Seems to be audiodg.exe ( I'll include pictures below). After googling it I found people with similiar problems, and mostly the solution needed was to update BIOS. Since I've never done that, that required some research too and looked like very dangerous thing to do, but desperate as I am I had to do it. After nervecracking BIOS update, bomb-defusing like experience, I successfully updated it from version dated 2015, to one with 6/2018 date on it, but problem is still there.
Afterwards I again tried installing various versions of drivers, mostly the ones that worked before with no success in fixing the problem.

https://imgur.com/a/z7X6OXV

 

[snoopy190496]

Easy fix just download https://www.iobit.com/en/beta/db6/download.php and update every driver that's missing with this program. If audio still not working then click on tools and there will be fix audio problems

I came across this software before and didn't have good results with it, made more mess than there was before. Also I found many people online claiming that it's a scam. I'll save it for the last solution if everything else fails. Thank you for your response.

 

[bulimichal]

Easy fix just download https://www.iobit.com/en/beta/db6/download.php and update every driver that's missing with this program. If audio still not working then click on tools and there will be fix audio problems

I came across this software before and didn't have good results with it, made more mess than there was before. Also I found many people online claiming that it's a scam. I'll save it for the last solution if everything else fails. Thank you for your response.

Well the truth about why people say it's a scam is because actual scammers abuse iobit programs in order to persuade people to get scammed basically also bitdefender cooperates with iobit so... I really don't think it's a scam