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Occasional static coming from speakers

Occasionally I'll go to play audio on my laptop and instead of playing audio, it just plays static at full volume. It does not matter whether I have headphones in or not, it plays it from the computer speakers, and there is no hint of the actual audio I'm trying to play, just static.

I also sometimes get audio from the headphone jack that sounds a bit staticky. (Edit: This also happens with audio from the computer speakers.) Like it plays the regular audio but it's kind of crackly, and it's only when there's actually audio playing rather than it being a background noise. The headphones work fine on other devices. I'm not sure whether this issue is related, though.

I have a feeling this is not a physical issue with the computer but a software issue for several reasons. The first is that restarting the computer fixes the problem. The second is that I regularly need to restart audio devices in Musescore (well-documented issue with the program, not my computer) and the last time it spit out static, I noticed it didn't recognize any audio devices whatsoever, while usually I just need to restart to get it to go from speakers to headphones. If my headphones sound staticky, I can also restart the audio a few times in the program and it eventually will fix it.

The laptop is running Windows 10, uses Realtek audio, and all drivers are up to date, if that's helpful. It's also generally a piece of crap so it doesn't surprise me that it has yet another issue.

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Possibly corrupted sound drivers or settings. Probably not hardware related as you say that a few restarts fixes the problem.

  • Go to Device Manager and uninstall all devices to do with sound.
  • Click on the little > in front of "Sound, video and games controllers, right click on device, select "Uninstall device", in box that pops up check the box by "Delete the driver software for this device" (may be corrupted) and click Uninstall box.
  • Restart your laptop. Windows should reinstall all the drivers. After reboot confirm all drivers have properly reinstalled by checking in the Device Manager where you were before.

Let us know how it goes.

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I followed your instructions, and everything seems fine for now, though I did need to restart my laptop a second time as for some reason the volume was way quieter than it should have been. It prompted me to do that though, and it's fine now.

Since it's not a constant issue I'm not sure if it's fully fixed yet, but I'll let you know if either it didn't work, or if I don't hear anymore static in the next couple weeks.

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Annaliese P will be eternally grateful.
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