Audio Service needs a restart is a common issue on Windows PC. When it occurs, you don’t hear any sound when playing games, listening to music, or even running YouTube videos. In this post, we have come up with some easy fixes that can find and resolve this audio issue on Windows 11/10.
The presence of outdated audio drivers and accumulated caches are the main reasons why you face trouble while playing some media files. Restarting Audio Services, and updating related drivers are two fixes that should resolve this issue on your computer.
Fix Audio Service needs restart issue on Windows 11/10
If you are not hearing any sound while playing games or listening to Music on Windows PC, here are some solutions that might help –
1] Enter Safe Boot on your Windows PC
Booting into the Clean Boot is an efficient way to check if the audio-related issues resolve on your Windows PC. This is possible because Safe Boot restricts all third-party apps and services from running on your computer. As a result of this, you might start hearing the sound again on your computer.
Follow these easy steps to boot into Clean Boot in Windows –
- First of all, log into your device as an administrator.
- Press the Win + R keys together to launch the Run dialogue box.
- Here, type
MSConfigin the text field then hit Enter. - Head over to the Services tab and tick the checkbox “Hide all Microsoft services“.
- Next, click on the “Disable all” button.
- Go to the Startup tab next and click Open Task Manager.
- When Task Manager opens up, right-click on the problematic app, and select the Disable button.
- Head over to the Boot tab next, and check “Safe boot” under Boot options.
- Click Apply and then OK to come out of the System Configuration tool.
Restart your PC next and when it reboots, play any media file on your computer. If the audio resumes coming out of it, there must lie some faulty apps on your PC. What you can do now is uninstall all third-party apps, and boot again into Windows normally.
Start installing the removed application one after another and check if the audio stops working after any app installation. This way, you will be able to identify the problematic app and take necessary action.
2] Restart the Windows Audio Service
Audio Service might also stop working when the related services are not running in the background. To fix this, you must set the required services to run automatically and check if the audio issue resolves this way. Here’s how:
- Press the Windows key & R to open the Run dialog.
- Type “
services.msc” without quotes inside it and hit OK. - When the Services window opens up, locate Windows Audio Services.
- Once found, right-click on it and select Stop.
- Double-click on the same service to launch its Properties window.
- Under General Tab, Stop the services in Running status.
- Set the Startup type to “Automatic” followed by Apply > OK.
- Repeat the above steps again for Windows Audio Endpoint Builder Service and Multimedia Class Scheduler Service (If they do lie on your system).
At last, restart your computer, and check if the “Audio Service needs a restart” issue resolves now.
3] Update your audio driver
It is required of us to regularly update all our device drivers. This is essential because when a driver becomes outdated, this might start causing different issues. Go and check if there are any pending driver updates on your computer. To do so, you may follow these easy steps –
- Jointly press WinKey + X to launch the Start screen.
- From the list, select Device Manager followed by the Enter key.
- Henceforth, expand the “Sound, video, and game controllers” category.
- Here right-click on the “High Definition Audio device” option thereafter select the Update Driver option from the context menu.
- Click “Search automatically for updated driver software” and wait till a copy of the driver is downloaded. This option might vary according to your Windows version.
- Once the task is completed, the message “The best driver software for your device is already installed” will pop up on Desktop Screen.
Lastly, Restart your system and play the audio/video again. Hope this time your system will smoothly do the task without any interruption.
From Windows 10 version 21h2 and higher versions, you won’t find any pending driver updates following the above way. On such devices, you need to check for optional updates, and manually download/install them on your computer.
