Resolved Sound distortion in XP / media players

This is my first post and I hope that I am in the right place with my question. My daughter is running Windows XP sp3. She watches a lot of movies on line and a while back downloaded the free DivX installer. For listening to music, or watching movies she uses the Windows Media Player 11, the DivX player only being used to watch certain movies on line. Two days ago DivX kept nagging her to download and install their latest version and she did. From that moment on all sound was distorted on her PC, including anything she tries to listen to or watch on Windows Media Player. The distortion may be described as if any sound below 600 Hz is missing; and some movies that she has tried watching have no sound at all. This includes YouTube videos. I thought that the "latest DivX" might be causing a conflict somewhere with Windows or the audio hardware and software, so we uninstalled it. Windows Media Player still played the music in the distorted manner in which I have described. We ran the trouble-shooting guides on the sound card and on the audio codecs and everything else we could find, but to no avail.

 

Hi Roy,

I've got three quick suggestions for you, in order of my preference:

!>uninstall and reinstall sound card. Making sure you have the latest updated version you manufacturer has available for download.

2>Try this player. Open sourced and comes with it's own built in codecs. Often recommended: If using firefox make sure the plugin is also checked.
http://www.videolan.org/

vlc player

3>k lite codec pack:
Standard should do it:
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/KLite-Codec-Pack-Standard/1094057842/2

*NOTE* Download button is the big blue button to the right of the titled download. I thought I just point this as two other download buttons make this a bit confusing for some. One for registry booster and one for spyware doctor.
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Now that you've uninstalled the divx update, you could also try a system restore, choosing a dated point that predates the installation of this update from divx.

 

Thank you!

Goddez1, thank you for your prompt and helpful reply, and my apologies for replying later than I might have wished. We tried the sound card uninstall / reinstall but to no avail. We have had the various players (Kantaris, VLN, Media Player Classic) but my daughter uses DivX to watch movies on line and the WMP to burn CDs. So rather at our wit's end, her friend happened to be visiting and he simply unplugged the speakers from the USB 2.0 port and plugged them back in again (same port) and voila! Problem was solved.

 

Hi Roywaidler,

To funny, intermittent sound related to loose speaker connection. Sometimes one loses focus and gets out of touch with the most obvious steps and in what order a problem should be tackled. I should have mentioned a connection check as one of the first things to look for. Oh well, thanks for the reminder, your welcome and most definitely thank you for the update.