Q: The speaker icon in the Notification area has a red cross on it. When I hover my mouse over it, it says The audio service is not running. When I right click on the it I get 3 options (Playback devices, Recording devices, Sounds) There is also an open volume mixer option but it’s greyed out.

Solution

1. Click Start, type Services.msc in the Start Search box.

2. Scroll down the list of services, right-click Windows Audio and select Start.

3. Select Properties for Windows Audio and set its Startup Type to Automatic.

If the Windows Audio service does not start and you get the error Error 1068: The dependency service or group failed to start, then make sure that the following services are started and their Startup Type is set to Automatic.

  • Plug and Play
  • Multimedia Class Scheduler
  • Windows Audio Endpoint Builder

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28 Responses to “Error “the Audio Service Is Not Running” When Opening the Volume Mixer in Vista” Subscribe to comments!

  1. thomas
    said this on Friday, February 5th 2010 11:27 pm

    my problem is that what your telling me to do with starting the windows audio, there is no windows audio listed as a service, it skips straight from webclient to windows backup

  2. Andrew
    said this on Friday, February 5th 2010 4:56 pm

    Thanks that worked a treat. Much more help than all the other links and easy to follow instructions which worked a treat

  3. Curtis Days
    said this on Friday, February 5th 2010 5:39 am

    Awesome man I can’t thank you enough. You saved me another couple hours. I had 1 of the 3 disabled but it works now. I used driver doctor and it royally screwed my computer up. Windows 7 beware.

  4. Vector
    said this on Wednesday, January 27th 2010 12:18 am

    Ahh! Thank you dhaman, it was the “Power Service” that I needed to start, you just saved me a Windows re-install!

  5. Egi-RaZoRZ
    said this on Monday, January 18th 2010 9:47 am

    Guys and gals, listen up – Do NOT use DIAL-A-FIX on Windows Vista or 7 in XP compatibility mode (like I did :), ESPECIALLY do not use DIAL-A-FIX on 64-bit Windows! (Even WinXP 64 is unsupported!). What these registry “FIXES” then do to your 7 system is they blow the HECK out of your registry integrity. On the next reboot after using the checkboxes, you *will* have problems with sound such as the one described above. If you really want to try it out (just kidding), or rather if you already have the dreaded sound problem, the only way I found around it is to use SYSTEM RESTORE. But I hate what it did to my exe files (deletes ‘em), so I am reinstalling Windows 7 again. I hope this will help whoever passes by this wonderful message, so far I found nobody who seemed to notice this detail.
    rofl!
    PS: I can’t imagine another way to fix this but to reinstall the system.
    G’day.

  6. Alex
    said this on Tuesday, January 12th 2010 10:31 pm

    thanks man !!!!! good job

  7. Geoff Taylor
    said this on Wednesday, December 30th 2009 12:21 pm

    Windows Audio Endpoint Builder isn’t running so audio isn’t running. If I try to start WAEB I get “error 1722 the rpc server is unavailable”

    Any ideas?

  8. Jelena
    said this on Saturday, December 19th 2009 7:50 pm

    This is great – I had the same problem and it was fixed as soon as I found this page and followed your instructions.

    Thank you so much for making my day :)

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