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Hearing a crackling noise when opening programs or playing audio on my laptop

Anonymous
2023-07-07T16:08:21+00:00

A few days ago I attempted to play a YouTube video and when I hit play I heard an awful crackling sound play through my headphones. I ignored it at first but when I attempted to reply another portion of the video, the same noise played again. One weird thing I noticed is that at one point I closed and reopened Firefox and the same crackling sound played again, even though I was not attempting to play any audio.

As soon as I noticed this problem, I began searching the internet to find solutions to this problem. I don't remember the exact order of what I had attempted to do but one thing I did was uninstall and reinstall the Realtek audio drivers. Despite several restarts, rather than fix the issue, I was left with no sound at all. I did install the same drivers from my laptop manufacturer's website for my laptop model so I am not sure what went wrong here. The laptop did recognise that I had plugged in my headphones but every attempt to play audio (including Windows 11's test tones) failed. I believe I also tried the speakers but I don't remember so I can't say for sure.

After this failed, I did a system restore to bring back the audio drivers. Once the system restore finished, I didn't notice the problem for the rest of the day. The next day, my laptop asked me to restart as it wanted to update my Realtek "MEDIA" driver to "6.0.9514.1". After the restart, the crackling noise had returned.

I really don't understand what is causing this problem and why it stopped after the system restore but returned after I restarted. I was under the impression the Realtek MEDIA driver was already on that version long before I started experiencing this problem (I check for updates on my laptop daily) so I don't think that's what's causing the issue. I also do not hear the crackling noise while listening to audio, it only happens before I play audio, before I open a program and at one point it was happening every few seconds while I wasn't doing anything at all, which was extremely annoying. The only solution I have found to my problem so far is playing audio on my headphones constantly, less than ideal.

At first I went to Reddit with this problem, they referred me to my laptop manufacturer, Acer. I decided to use Acer's live chat support but they didn't seem to understand the problem I was experiencing and instead referred me to "Microsoft support" claiming there was a "microphone issue" on Windows 11. I mentioned nothing about using a microphone in our conversation and when I brought it up they appeared to change their mind and say there was an "issue with the headphones with the audio jack on Windows 11". I'm really confused at this point and don't know where else to turn. Is there anyone here that can help with my issue?

I also tried disabling the audio enhancements in Windows 11's sound settings but it made no difference.

Here is some information about my laptop specs if it helps, I only purchased it a few months ago:

Acer Nitro 5 AN515-58-75YL
Intel Core i7-12700H
NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX™ 3060
16GB DDR4 RAM
512GB SSD

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Devices and drivers

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-07-08T21:11:01+00:00

    Thank you for the feedback. Another procedure you can also try is to roll back the audio driver if you suspect that a driver update has caused the problem.

    1 - Press the Windows Logo + letter X keys on the keyboard and, in the list, click Device Manager.

    2 - In the Device Manager window, navigate to the device you want to revert to the driver and click to select.

    3 - On the menu bar, click Action and then click Properties.

    4 - In the Properties menu of [Device Name], click the Driver tab.

    5 - On the Driver tab, click on the Revert Driver button.

    NOTE: This option is only available if a newer version of the driver has been installed.

    6 - In the Driver Package Rollback window, click on the Yes button.

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  1. Anonymous
    2023-07-08T10:48:56+00:00

    The problem does persist in a clean boot (it did keep the Realtek drivers though). What's strange is that I also tried disabling the Windows Audio services, obviously I was just left with no sound at all. But I accidentally left them disabled when trying to restart normally, yet during the restart, I could still hear crackling noises through my headphones.

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  2. Anonymous
    2023-07-07T19:09:16+00:00

    Hi, my name is Anderson Souza, I hope I can help you with your issue.

    We can start by enabling a Clean Windows Boot. A clean boot is performed to start Windows using a minimal set of drivers and startup programs. This helps to eliminate software conflicts that occur when you install a program or an update or when you run a program on Windows. You can also resolve or determine which conflict is causing the problem by performing a clean boot.

    Please check the necessary procedures to do a clean boot on Windows at the link below:

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929135

    If the problem does not occur at Clean Boot, the article itself indicates how to identify the cause.

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  3. MR_MEOW 3,536 Reputation points
    2023-07-07T16:45:03+00:00

    Yep I have an acer aspire f15. On my laptop only thing made by Acer is the acer logo. I definitely won't be buying an Acer again after all my issues. It would be a microphone issue under device manager try disabling the microphone or putting it on mute, temporary till you need it. The computer maybe Tring to listen for commands if you have Cortana ect.

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