Windows 10: Audio music files crash Windows (1607), even after clean install

I'm at a loss. With 1511, everything was fine. Since going to 1607 a couple of months ago, things have gone haywire, as documented in other threads.* Among the biggest problems has been that music files played via players (not online streaming) invariably crash during the first song, the second song or occasionally down the line and take the OS with it (foobar, Zoom Player, others - not watching videos with ZP though). That was with a USB connection to a dac with its own USB driver. That and repeated file manager and Start/Restart hangs with 1607 finally led me to do a clean install last night.

Everything was going great until I installed Zoom Player and the dac's USB driver. First song stops halfway through and Zoom Player locks up, won't close. With that, the hanging Restarts and Startups commence again, even after I uninstalled both the driver and ZP and add ons. So I tried again today, this time with no USB, just Zoom Player and earphones. Right off, after reinstalling Zoom Player and presumably when it crashed, all the taskbar buttons went nonfunctional, blank (white). And again, the music stops after several songs, and shows "Loading" indefinitely. With that, the taskbar buttons go nonfunctional again - "can't open this item" - although this time they are not blank. Had to manually shut down via the case. Upon reboot, I try VLC. It hangs too, three seconds into the first file. Same deal: VLC won't close and have to manually shut down.

So I'm at a loss (Give me back 1511!) At first, I was wondering if the one or more of the programs Zoom Player adds during set up, specifically ffdshow, MadVR and Haali Media Splitter, might be in conflict with 1607, although they are well respected and I'm not aware of anyone else having problems with them (if there were, it's the kind of thing that would have been taken care of by now). But ZP and VLC are not alone in this, so there's got to be something more basic going on. Beyond saying that, I'm stuck and need to ask for help figuring this out. Any ideas? Thanks,

*Update from 1511 to 1607 failing
Desktop icons not responding on first click, opening other icons


Win 10 Pro x64, i7-4790K, ASRock Extreme6 (bios current), 32gb RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 950 SC card, JPlay USB card (unplugged currently).

:)

 

Audio clicks even after Windows 10 clean install

Hi Jose,

Based on the details provided, it is possible that the issue is within the device itself. It could be that the device
is not compatible with the new Windows 10 update. We recommend that you Run the Windows Update
again,
download and install
the latest driver update available in your manufacturer's website.

If there are no changes after performing the suggested troubleshooting, kindly reach out for the device manufacturer
for further assistance.

Let us know how it goes.

Regards.

 

Audio clicks even after Windows 10 clean install

This problem just came up recently and I just couldn't find solution that worked for me, and most of what I found are old threads.

The first thing I did when I noticed this was blame my audio hardware and drivers, reinstalled everything and nothing happened, but then I found out this was happening in both the motherboard output and hdmi output from my video card.

Then I found out by searching some forums that this is CPU related, ran some tests in LatencyMon and these were the results:





Since I was already having some problems with my startup, first thing I did was perform a clean install of the OS, and ran the test before installing anything else, same results, audio clicks everywhere. Performed every recommended step I found online, set
the energy to high performance (and the minimum CPU state to 100%) disable everything related to CPU throttling in BIOS, and nothing.

Could this be a recent update to windows? (wich is already packed in the ISO, I think, since it didn't update much after the clean install)

Or can this be hardware related? Maybe I could think so if the issue was related to the audio hardware, but since it is the CPU. I don't think it can degrade performance over time like this, or can it? From what I know when a CPU dies it just dies at a moment's
notice.

I'm pretty much sure the update is to blame, since my machine is one year old and was doing just fine until now.

Please, someone enlighten me.

Specs:

CPU: AMD FX-8320E

RAM: 8Gb

GPU: GTX 1060 6GB

Motherboard: ASUS M5A78LM/USB3

Windows 10 Pro Build 16299

 

Maybe your DAC's USB driver is not compatible with 1607. Try another DAC and see if the same happens

 

Are your music files on the same drive as your OS? The only thing I can think of is maybe your music files somehow got corrupted during the Windows update.

 

@theveterans, read my post again, in particular the second paragraph from "So I tried again..." In any case, the PS Audio dac's USB driver is being used by others using the latest Win 10.

@ArazelEternal, No, the music files are on another SSD. And it's been a variety of music files, mp3 and flac mainly. Starting from the simplest explanation, the common ingredients are the Anniversary edition and a BIOS update right before I did it. I'll see if I can roll back the latter. That aside, I haven't found anyone else reporting a similar problem yet.

To be clear, the music players crashing provoke, Restarting/Startup hangs, etc., but those hangs have a life of their own, independent of music playing (or USB even being hooked up).

 

Maybe its the players rather than Windows? I have no problems with Windows Media Player or VLC, or Goldwave or Sony Sound Studio playing music files such as wav, mp3, etc. On-line streaming audio is OK, too.

I also use my PC for my home recording studio (Cakewalk Sonar) and there is no problems with it either.,

 

VLC works for you but crashes for me with 1607, even with just earphones, no extra USB driver loaded, so what does that tell you?

Considering other possibilities, I neglected to mention that through this period 9/10 sfc scannow runs come up clean and all the chkdsk ones do. Tweaking. com hasn't fixed it, nor has Windows 10 Manager. Going back to the previous mobo BIOS, the one used with 1511 but not 1607, didn't either.