Solved The dangers of over thinking....

Upgraded to Win 8.1 , apart form the ridiculously long amount of time it took...it went well , installed ok , tested it...turned PC off and went to bed...


Went to play a video file , part way through , the sound started to go 'fuzzy' , then high treble , then almost muffled......

SO , I go and re-install my codecs , re-install the drivers for the sound card , re-seat the card , problem still occurs.

I toggle on the mobo's on-board sound chip , and it works fine if I move the sound connectors to those outputs..I start to tear my hair out...

Just by chance I look at the sound settings for the output........Win 8.1 had reset the outgoing sound to 7.1 surround sound (The max the card can handle) , so it was trying to play some of the sounds to non-existant speakers... (it's a monitor with a 2.1 sound system with 5.1 emulation).

Set it back to 5.1 and all works.....


Sometimes the simplest things.... <sigh>

lol, just had a similar encounter, after installing 8.1 sound worked but in a very strange way, turned out to be an automatically downloaded updated Realtek driver, which by default had some completely botched socalled 'Premium Sound' ticked.

Apart from that (detail really, but needed some head-scratching to find), all well with a 8.1 test upgrade here.

Over-thinking really is bad for you!
BBC News - Rumination: The danger of dwelling