Kenneth wrote:
> Howdy,
>
> I have a Win2000 box in our home.
>
> My son often uses it.
>
> Yesterday, I wanted to use it to view something on Youtube,
> but was surprised to discover that I had no sound.
>
> As I checked the sound settings (expecting to find the
> output muted), my son said "Dad, after a while, the sound
> always stops. It will come back if you log me off, and then
> log on again."
>
> I tried it, and, of course, he was correct...
>
> It appears that for any user, after about fifteen minutes,
> the sound will shut down.
>
> Logging on as another user fixes the sound, as does logging
> off, then logging on as the original user.
>
> What might be causing this sort of thing, and how can I
> correct this nuisance?
>
> Many thanks,

What kind of sound is it ? Look for a branding
string (Creative Soundblaster, Analog Devices SoundMax,
Nvidia Soundstorm, Realtek AC'97, that kind of thing).

If you Google using the sound type info, are there any reports
of sound dying ?

The reason for this, could be the driver is running
out of some resource. Like a memory leak in the
driver, a corrupted data structure and so on.
You could check Event Viewer, to see if anything
is reported. The fact that changing users fixes it,
suggests it is probably something higher up than
the driver that is doing it. (I presume the driver
belongs to the kernel, and the driver doesn't
reload when you change users.)

If you go to Start:Run and type "dxdiag", you can
run the DirectX tests. My experience is, when the
tests fail, I usually don't get any extra clues
as to why. The "Sound" tab tests DirectSound,
and the "Music" tab tests the various
synthesizer/MIDI options.

If you uncover any additional symptoms, like an
8 digit hex error code, you can throw that into
a Google search as well.

Searching the C: drive for ".log" files, will give
you some idea of the many files Windows keeps to
report stuff. For example, setupapi.log has some
info from when hardware drivers are installed.

Paul