BleepingComputer.com: Taskbar Still Freezes; I Think I Found The Culprit

Hi again. I posted an earlier topic about my taskbar constantly freezing which died. Now I've come back to report that I might have found the cause of all this. Here's the Problem signature that appears in the Problem Reports and Solutions window everytime explorer.exe crashes.

Problem Event Name: AppHangXProcB1
Application Name: Explorer.EXE
Application Version: 6.0.6001.18000
Application Timestamp: 47918e5d
Hang Signature: 7ce1
Hang Type: 128
Waiting on Application Name: svchost.exe:AudioClientRpc
Waiting on Application Version: 0.0.0.0
OS Version: 6.0.6001.2.1.0.768.3
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Hang Signature 1: 9224369711237709974176f646a5196a
Additional Hang Signature 2: 0c9f
Additional Hang Signature 3: a56c4207c57f0df533c0ba603853928d
Additional Hang Signature 4: 7ce1
Additional Hang Signature 5: 9224369711237709974176f646a5196a
Additional Hang Signature 6: 0c9f
Additional Hang Signature 7: a56c4207c57f0df533c0ba603853928d

The taskbar has frozen exactly 115 times, and every problem report says the exact same thing. Strangely, svchost.exe is nowhere in the Task Manager. Why is this?

Is there anything that I can do to fix the taskbar?

I would suspect that it's a conflict between Windows and your audio driver. As for the missing svchost.exe - are you running in an account with administrative privileges? Do you have the "Show processes for all users" selected in Task Manager → Processes tab?

I just showed all the processes. There are several processes all called svchost.exe in the task manager. They have different memory and I/O reads.

So how can I find out just what about the audio driver is conflicting with Windows?

This is why I suspect your audio driver:

Quote

Exactly what's causing it is beyond my abilities. Usually uninstalling your audio drivers/programs and then reinstalling a freshly downloaded copy will remedy the errors.