How to reset audio on Windows?

Question

Is there a way to reset or restart the audio (stack) of Windows without logging off or restarting the OS?

score 47 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 10 '12 at 06:40

47

Yes.

Go to an elevated command prompt and type net stop AudioSrv followed by net start AudioSrv

or right click on Computer, click on Manage and expand Services. Right click on Windows Audio and click restart.

answered Aug 10 '12 at 06:40

William Hilsum

117,648

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 04 '16 at 20:39

3

FWIW, I created a batch file that does the whole kit-and-kaboodle (including UAC prompting)

https://gist.github.com/tigerhawkvok/b27b0cbaca2deda1ae33

Tested on Windows 10.

answered Mar 04 '16 at 20:39

Philip Kahn

131

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 08 '18 at 13:55

Let me put my small tweak here... Restarting audio services helps sometimes but in my case the problem was that sometimes one channel ONLY (most of the time it's the left one) suddenly stops. Restarting audio services did not fix it. What i do with success is simply go into speaker settings - advanced and change the "default format" to something else (e.g.24bit 48khz studio quality) , apply the new setting and then revert to my preferred one and apply the new setting again. That fixes it every time.

How to reset audio on Windows?

3 Answers3