New
#11
That's some odd advice. Neither of these things have been problematic since long before I was having audio troubles, and nothing has changed besides the usual system updates... I really should dispose of the WinTV though, it's never been used in the last couple of years. It was just a convenient means to get TV on my computer monitor at the time. As for the webcam, simply unplugging it is easy enough.
My troubleshooting methods suggest both of those are completely irrelevant given how much I know about their history and rather flawless functionality in this PC. It's not like I recently installed something and broke something else in the process. This is just something that has happened with the only changes being Microsoft updates.
I don't mean to sound ungrateful, I'm thankful that you're all interested in trying to be of some help, but I feel like the only person in the universe with this problem right now, and that's typically my luck in regards to most Windows troubles I've had. This just doesn't have any of the tell-tale signs of user configuration or device drivers, and the fact that I do get audio some random amount of time (usually 30-60 minutes) after booting without interfering in any way makes me suspect it is definitely rooted deeper in the operating system.
I guess I'm just s**t out of luck for now, unless Microsoft find a relevant bug and patch it, or open source the kernel so somebody else can... wishful thinking.