Vista: Sound Output Stops After Changing Sound Output Device

[JosephBAdams]

I don't know how to describe the feature in Windows Vista that is driving me insane, but here's the problem that I am encountering. When using my computer, sometimes I want to switch from headphones to speakers or vice versa. In all previous versions of Windows, I simply unplugged output device # 1 and plugged in output device # 2. Sound instantly worked. In Vista, it's as if Windows is detecting that the sound output device has been changed (plugged/unplugged), and I have absolutely no sound until I TOTALLY restart EVERY program that was producing sound on my computer.

Is there a way for me to stop Windows from doing this absolutely retarded nonsense? I want to be able to unplug my headphones and plug in my speakers, and have sound instantly, instead of having to restart my whole computer or restart each program that is creating sound.

 

[VirtualLarry]

It depends on the configuration of your sound card hardware. Whether or not it considers the front-panel headphone connections to be a different device or not.

 

[JosephBAdams]

I'm plugging and unplugging from the sound card directly. No front port is connected.

 

[VirtualLarry]

That's even wierder.

Well, I noticed that on my Via-chipset mobo with Windows 7, if I didn't plug any speakers in, it defaulted to the SPDIF output device. So apparently, it doesn't activate your sound card unless something is plugged into that jack. (I assume that this feature is dependent on jack-detection capability, which is in all new onboard sound chips.)

So it sounds like it's actually removing the audio device once you unplug speakers, and then re-creating it when you plug them back in, but your audio apps don't re-aquire the DirectX device object or whatever so you have to restart them.

I had similar issues with XP Pro and WoW, when using both the onboard sound and a USB headset. There's a bug whereby using the USB headset for some length of time causes it to consume 100% CPU time on one core in kernel mode (wait loop?), so the only fix was to unplug it. But then, it would cause the audio to shut off, and plugging it back in didn't restart the audio, I had to exit the game and restart it, along with Ventrio.


The only thing I can think of it, perhaps there is a quasi-undocumented way to disable jack-detection for your sound card in the registry somewhere. Then it wouldn't be able to know that you unplugged your audio output device.

 

[JosephBAdams]

I am at a total loss here. Still can't figure it out.