Maximum PC

hello, i recently found myself needing to do a reinstall of windows 7, 64 bit professional. after i got that all sorted out and recovered my data from external backups, i ran into a new problem. for whatever reason, when i go to watch videos online, such as on your website or another like youtube, the audio starts off fine, but then promptly cuts out or drops in volume to just a murmur. i don't know what setting migt be causing this, though i would assume it was lurking somewhere in yje Hardware & Sound section of the control panel. if it is not a setting, i would suspect it may be an out-of-date or driver problem.

i am currently looking through a dxdiag file to see what info might be relevant to include. no problems are listed for the dxdiag file uner sound. i do, however, seem to have more than one sound device installed (yay for factory preinstalled dedundancy). the following are the sound devices that are listed:
Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio
2- High Definition Audio Device
NVIDIA High Definition Audio

i can provide the dxdiag info in full or only in part, if need be. i just am not sure what is and is not useful; plus it is long.

Did you reinstall Flash?
I had this problem once with a corrupt Flash install.
What browser are you using?
Try reinstalling the browser, or using an alternative such as Google Chrome (preferred) or Firefox. Does the problem persist?

Did you disable the onboard sound via the BIOS? That would be the reason for 3 sound devices. I only have 2, Creative XFi and Nvidia listed on my system.

oh yay! while i had reinstalled flash since my windows reinstall, it was no longer the most recent version. i updated it to the newest version. i had also tried changing a setting or two for my playback devices - i change the "Default Format" to a higher quality; changed "communication activity" from "reduce the volume of other sounds by 80%" to "Do nothing." things seem to play correctly now - and in both firefox as well as internet explorer. i also realized that one program i had yet to reinstall after my reinstal was Secunia psi; i am doing so now. who knows what other programs need updating/patching.

thank you so much!

@nevander: last i looked at my bios, i did not see an option to disable the onboard sound. i had looked in the bios to do so once previous. i am not sure where in my bios that setting may lie. i could easily have missed it last time. i will see how the current settings pan out first, give it a few days before i go and make any more changes. i dont much like the idea of tweaking too many variables at once without doing some routine tests of the results.

I wouldn't manually install flash - instead, install chrome. It installs flash and adobe reader as well - albeit, securely so you can't get one of those pesky viruses the kiddies love to write to exploit the weaknesses in those two programs.

It keeps them updated as well so you'll never have to worry about them again.

That's true, but many people like Firefox or IE (I wouldn't know why on that last one O_o) better than Chrome.