Fix DirectSound Output Not Playing Audio Problem After Several Reinstallations Of Inbox Audio Driver
Do you use software to render/play audio via the DirectSound API? If you faced some issues with the driver and hence uninstalled and reinstalled audio drivers such as “High Definition Audio Device” (HDAudio) several times, then you might get the following error while trying to render a audio on your Windows Vista or Windows 7 PC:
“These filters cannot agree on a connection. Verify type compatibility of input pin and output pin.
Cannot play back the audio stream: no audio hardware is available, or the hardware is not responding. (Return code:0×80040256)”
According to Microsoft Support this issue can happen when DirectSound uses an internal store to keep track of audio hardware, and the internal store becomes unsynchronized with the Windows Audio stack.
To work around this issue, you can clean up the internal store DirectSound which uses to store audio device information. The store will be recreated when an application uses DirectSound again.
1. Start > Type Regedit and Press enter.
2. In the Registry Editor, propogate to the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\ActiveMovie
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Multimedia\ActiveMovie
In each of the above keys, delete all the subkeys in the right pane.
[Via KB2011490]