Computer won't play videos or sounds, please help.

I am running a Toshiba computer with Windows 8 and Google Chrome as my default browser.

Basically, any videos from any website will load but not play, and any sounds (not necessarily just from Google Chrome) won't play either. For example, when I change the volume of my computer it does not play a tone (when it normally should). I have updated Java and Adobe Shockwave to no avail.

The problem started occurring a couple of days ago. Originally I could restart my computer and I would be fine for a while, but eventually that stopped working. I have had this computer for at least 6 months and have not had any problems with it. Also I ran a quick scan with Windows Defender and it didn't find anything out of the ordinary.

Thank you for your time. Here's an elephant.



Cheers!

bump

Try doing a System Restore to before this started happening, see if that fixes it.

I am having similar problems as peruvianthunder. Wherein I cannot play any videos or hear any sound. It applies to all three different browsers I use[Firefox, IE and Google Chrome]. It started happening after an essential OS update. Should I start a new thread? Or may I discuss it here as well?

Try running:

sfc /scannow

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

Then sfc again.
All in administrator command prompts.
Then restart.

Right click the cmd window title bar if you wish to paste the commands.

[video=youtube;wGEEZ3TsGzc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=wGEEZ3TsGzc[/video]

Thank you very much for replying, David Bailey. You're advice seems to have fixed the problem for me. I no longer have to use the troubleshooting tool to temporary get the media player working everytime I start-up the laptop from shutdown.
This is what I got after using "Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth"

The corrupted file has been fixed and my laptop works like new again. Thanks.

Glad it is working better.