Error “the Audio Service Is Not Running” When Opening the Volume Mixer in Vista

© Ramesh Srinivasan | Windows Vista | 19th April 2008

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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23 Comments

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  1. ngawanglodup
    said this on Thursday, October 6th 2011 6:09 pm

    i get the error 1297 and cannot start the windows audio service.how to fix it.

  2. Dan
    said this on Saturday, September 24th 2011 4:15 am

    Thanks! now I don’t need to stop my downloads (having to restart) to have sound again!

  3. Goose
    said this on Saturday, September 3rd 2011 2:31 pm

    You are a Legend!

  4. Moh.ali
    said this on Monday, August 22nd 2011 12:15 pm

    Very good trouble shooter, thank y very much

  5. Tomas
    said this on Friday, April 29th 2011 1:19 am

    Excellent troubleshooter; led straight to a fix on my desktop.
    Thanks.

  6. sam
    said this on Thursday, April 28th 2011 6:58 pm

    Great Inutructions, My Sound Is Working Again!!!

  7. Dewald
    said this on Sunday, March 6th 2011 4:27 pm

    hi

    I have tried all the above and it still has no sound. Instead i get and error 0x8000700c1:0x800700c1 message. how do i repair this problem?

  8. Dustin
    said this on Tuesday, December 14th 2010 6:56 am

    thank you for the help without this my dad would have been mad lol. and i also learned some other stuff with this thanks again

  9. Charlie Brown
    said this on Wednesday, December 8th 2010 2:45 pm

    When I tried to start the Multimedia class scheduler I got the error code 193: 0xc1. What do I do with this?

  10. karen
    said this on Monday, October 25th 2010 9:49 pm

    All is set on
    “auto” but multimedia came up with code 998. Now what?

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