SOLVED: No sound, Control Panel>Sound>Recording freezes, can't disable stereo mix

[oliver.iacono]

Hello,

I had Stereo Mix enabled on my laptop for a little while so that I could send audio to my headphone jack and bluetooth speakers at the same time. I no longer need to use both outputs, and today when I turned my laptop on there was no sound. Windows seemed to be behaving in the way it does when there's no sound device, ie youtube videos don't start playing unless you click play (at which point there's no audio), VLC media player doesn't start playing videos at all (even when you click play).

I figured this was probably a problem with Stereo Mix, so I went to Control Panel>Sound, and when I click on the Recording tab, the window freezes and I have to end task in Task Manager. I'm not 100% sure that Stereo Mix is the problem with having no sound but as my next step I would like to disable it since I don't need it enabled at the moment anyway. So, my question is, is there a workaround way to disable Stereo Mix which doesn't involve going via Control Panel>Sound>Recording? If not, what is making the Recording tab freeze and how do I fix it?

Thank you!

 

[oliver.iacono]

Don't worry, it turned out that the problem was actually being caused by NVIDIA Virtual Audio Device (Wave Extensible). I found it in Device Manager in 'Other devices'. Device Manager was unable to find an update, but the NVIDIA system tray icon was offering an update. After updating, NVIDIA Virtual Audio Device (Wave Extensible) moved into 'Sound, video and game controllers' and my sound problems were fixed!