I accidentally ran it after coming back from a System Restore. I'm not sure if this means anything important, but I didn't restart my computer or anything of that sort after the System Restore failed to eliminate the malware issue. I then found this website and tried to follow the instructions given, only to end up with something going very wrong. I don't know if it's related to not having restarted after the System Restore or what; I just know that it's bad.
I have an HP laptop with the lighted touch-sensitive controls for volume and such. I had, at one point before running TFC, muted the volume because the noises from AIM were distracting me - but I did want to talk to a friend, rather than closing it outright. Of course, I did close Trillian (AIM extension, if that matters) before trying to run TFC. While I think that I had unmuted the volume before then, I'm not completely certain. I do, however, know that it caused a mild state of panic when I realized the button was red after TFC had finished and begun restarting my computer.
The sound never came back when it restarted. The light cycled through blue and red during the start up process, but the start up became so slow I feared my computer was going to be dead. The num lock key also seemed (I'm not certain, as I rarely watch my computer start up, so this may just be panic making me -think- that it's wrong) to be following the wrong lit and unlit states. When all of the other lights were blue, it was off. And vice versa. Not sure if that means anything.
I undid the System Restore and went back to a point at the beginning of this month. Luckily, the light began working again and the sound returned. I went about my business with chores etc, came back to the computer, and forgot for just long enough to mess up that I had just come back from a System Restore. I noticed that Viewpoint (a nasty little piece of software, if I do say so myself, as I'd never allowed it to install) was on my computer again because of how far back the last restore point was. So I tried to remove it. Then I tried to check the AppData folder in my profile to see if it left any traces. Windows Explorer crashed the moment I hovered AppData (so possibly the moment I opened my profile, as I'm experiencing a lot of lag now). I tried three more times, to the same result.
I tried to undo the System Restore, which was when I had the 'face-desk' moment of realizing I'd not restarted after the restore. Insert lots of wanting to kick myself here. So I try to just restart it and hope for the best. The sound has since been dead, with the light stuck in red. Even another undo-restore and repeat-restore didn't fix it. Nor have countless attempts to make it fix itself by restarting (which still takes a bothersome amount of time to do).
According to Task Manager, the IDT audio driver process is running. However, I want to say that it used to have an entry at startup. I'm not certain, and I guess it doesn't completely matter if it is running in the background anyway (right?); but I just... Feel as if there is something missing from the startup programs/tasks, and can't find anything related to the audio in the list via CCleaner - be it grayed out or black. Maybe I'm recalling incorrectly, as I never paid much attention to components that didn't need to be changed and were working properly, but something just feels as if it's missing...
Anyway, when I press the button, it remains red. However, the computer registers it as a mute or unmute. The only problem is, even when in an unmute state with the button red, the speakers just do not produce any sound at all. I figured my sound was just dead and gone, but then a friend reccommended I try headphones. She has a similar issue (which I won't go into detail of, except that it was obtained through different means and she has a much different system) and pointed out that her headphones no longer work, either. So I tried them... And headphones do work. I think it's related to this:
In my playback devices area, it says I have "Speakers and Dual Headphones" (which is the default) AND "Independent Dual Headphones". There are only, in reality, two headphones jacks. But somehow, I think this may narrow the problem down to either them in combination with the speakers or the speakers themselves. I have major headache issues so don't want to be stuck using headphones; but this does at least give me hope that maybe it'll be easier to pinpoint the problem when we know that some form of sound still works.
I will go ahead and ask that you please let me know how and when to do any backups etc. during the fix process (if we - hopefully - can find a fix), as I'm fairly illiterate when it comes to the technical side of computing.
Information that may be useful -
OS: Windows Vista Home Premium SP1
CPU: AMD Turion X2 Ultra Dual-Core Mobile ZM-82
RAM: 3.0 GB
Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 3200
I have the Vista theme patched so that I can use themes from places such as deviantART, but the one I'm using now as well as all of the ones I've installed are from before I purchased the computer a little over a year ago and have been on there from day two without causing any problems.
My computer is an HP Pavillion dv7-z. It has IDT Audio drivers and a touch-sensitive button panel to control whether the sound is muted as well as the volume of it.
I run an Administrator account for everyday usage. This is a single-account computer.
Sign In
Create Account
