Studio 15 Sound Driver Crashes

I have a 1555 running Win 7 x64 U.

Recently I've had this issue where the sound driver dies, usually freezing any sound-using programs with it. For example, if I view a Flash video on Firefox or IE8, the flash plugin causes kills the sound driver and the browser locks up. Skype will kill the sound driver too. So will plugging in my USB microphone or sometimes my HDMI cable to my TV (I watch instant Netflix on it).

Once the sound driver crashes, I can't get any sound from programs like Winamp and even the Windows logoff has to be bypassed because it can't play the logoff sound. The internet is all but unusable unless I disable flash (because any flash page will crash it).

I have searched for up-to-date drivers and they are all the latest. I tried reinstalling the sound driver with the one of the Dell support site. I also tried reinstalling the Flash plugin. I tried disabling Bluetooth DLLs (some other forum thought it was related to the webcam) and tried registry tweaks but nothing has worked so far. It's really aggravating.

Has anyone else had this issue?

 

I have a 1557 and the first one I got would do that with the IDT driver installed.

I would try only using the Windows 7 driver for it.

Just uninstall the IDT driver completely,reboot and just let Windows recognized the hardware and install its own driver.

 

With IDT uninstalled will I still be able to send audio to my HDTV?

 

Yes.

ATI supplies the HDMI audio

 

Ha! It worked! Thanks a bunch, man; I was starting to get Youtube withdrawal.