Question Sound problem, have soundcard, should I deactivate onboard sound chip?

[Countess_C]

I have a EVGA NU Audio sound card, and sometimes the web browser or media player hangs when I play something with sound, and in the log it says that svchost.exe_Audiosrv hang.

In the device manager I see these sound devices:

EVGA NU Audio
NVIDIA High Definition Audio
NVIDIA Virtual Audio Device (Wave Extensible) (WDM)
Realtek(R) Audio

Is it safe to deactivate the Realtek and Nvidia devices? I'm thinking maybe there's some kind of conflict going on when devices I don't use are installed and active.

 

[zinkles]

Is it safe to deactivate the Realtek and Nvidia devices

Yes its possible, and nothing will happen. Worts case scenario you'll end up with no audio, which then you can re-enable those and get it to work as before. I'm not entirely sure if it'll fix your issue though, but of course, worth the try.

 

[Countess_C]

Yes its possible, and nothing will happen. Worts case scenario you'll end up with no audio, which then you can re-enable those and get it to work as before. I'm not entirely sure if it'll fix your issue though, but of course, worth the try.

Thanks, I have inactivated all except the sound card, and the sound works fine.

Yeah, I'm not sure either if this will fix the issue, but yes, worth the try.

Someone else had a similar problem on their laptop and they also had to do a hard reboot every time, like I do. In that case the issue was solved by changing the size of the paging file, virtual memory. Not sure if that would work for me, since I let Windows set the size automatically, and I have 16GB RAM and the sound still hangs even though I'm only have a browser and/or media player running.

svchost.exe crashes, Audio Service stops running - Windows 10 Support

Page 1 of 2 - svchost.exe crashes, Audio Service stops running - posted in Windows 10 Support: Hello, have been surfing BleepingComputer intermittently for years finding solutions to common Windows 10 internal problems. Whenever my Focusrite Scarlet Solo 3rd generation is plugged into USB-C hub...

www.bleepingcomputer.com

 

[Countess_C]

It was the Nvidia High Definition Audio driver that conflicted with my sound card, so disabling it fixed the issue. I installed a new graphics card today and the problem came back, and yes, the Nvidia sound driver had returned. Disabled it again. It sends sound from the graphics card to the monitor speakers via hdmi, and I have no use for that anyway.