No Sound In Windows 7? Try This Fix

Something strange happened from one day to the next on a computer system running Windows 7 Professional. The sound would stop playing even though everything was configured properly. The Creative X-FI sound card was connected, the volume was set to a moderate level and the devices were enabled. Still no sound in Windows 7.

A check in the Sound control on the Control Panel showed the devices that were able to produce sound on the computer system. The strange thing here was that the default device was set to be WSAudio_DeviceS[1] and not the Creative SB X-Fi Speakers. The configuration looked like the following in the Sound control panel:

The default device is the WsAudio_DeviceS(1) and the Creative SB X-Fi Speakers are only set to be the default communications device. It is possible to change the default device with a right-click on the preferred devicefor default sound playback and the selection of Set As Default Device from the menu.

This turned the sound back on immediately. A good way to test is to play some sound in the background while performing the operation. Later that day the sound device was switched again to WsAudio-DeviceS(1) which was obviously not wanted. It is unclear why the device was switched again.

The only viable solution to prevent that was to disbale the device that was not needed by right-clicking and selecting Disable. This removed the device from the display and prevented Windows 7 from switching the sound output device again