BleepingComputer.com: Taskbar Freezes After Volume Adjustments

I have a Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium, 32-bit.
My problem is that when I adjust the volume, either by tuning it from the keyboard or from the screen, it freezes the taskbar (the Start button, etc.) and the volume icon disappears. Then I can't do anything with the volume for like 15 minutes until it appears again.
This started happening after one of Microsoft's updates, like a few months ago. I don't know if this is connected to the problem or not.
I searched for solutions online and I found that a "hotfix" could fix this. So I downloaded it, but when I tried to install it, it says, "The update does not apply to your system."

I contacted Microsoft's support, they sent me the hotfix which didn't work. I informed them it didn't work, but they didn't help my any further.
I called my laptop's support line, they didn't help me except to tell me I should reformat the laptop.

This problem is annoying me! I can't adjust the volume (which should be a simple task) without it freezing!

Thank you for your time, and thanks in advance for any solutions.

Go to Start and type in "devmgmt.msc" (without the quotes) and press Enter. Scroll down to the Sound, Video, and Game Controllers category to see if there are any red x's or yellow !'s there.

Also, let us know the exact make and model of your system so we can look up the specs and the location of a sound driver.

Under the Sound, Video, and Game Controller category, there are no red x's or !'s.
There is only Realtek High Definition Audio.

My laptop is a Toshiba Satellite A135-S4527.

Thank you for your reply!

This should be the sound driver for your system: http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/su...;all_docs=false

Go to Control Panel...Programs...Uninstall a program and uninstall the Realtek Audio driver from there. Then download the above file and double click on it to install it. That "should" fix the problem.

usasma, on Aug 20 2008, 06:10 PM, said:

I did as you said, but unfortunately, it didn't solve the problem.

There's several other Toshiba utilities that can be causing this.

I'd suggest:
- Open up Task Manager (Ctrl-Alt-Del)
- Click on the Processes tab
- Click on the View menu item
- Click on the Select Columns item
- Put a checkmark by the IOReads item (not any of the other IO thingies).
- Click OK to exit the dialog
- Resize the Task Manager window so you can see everything.
- Perform the action that freezes everything
- Look for changes in the CPU, Memory, and IOReads columns. I'd suspect that, most likely you'll find a large jump in one of the processes in the IOReads (although it could be in the Memory, or CPU columns). Give us the name of that process and we should be able to track down the offending program.

The process that makes the largest jump when I play with the volume is: csrss.exe

Again, thank you very much for your help!

csrss.exe is a critical Windows process and is associated with many other things on the system.
What value was elevated for csrss.exe? Was it the IOReads, the CPU, or the Memory (or all of them)?
Usually you'll see something else that elevates at the same time - was there anything like that? If so, what was it's process name?

If you still can't find it, then we'll have to resort to another program to investigate the csrss.exe process.
Download this free program: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysintern...ssExplorer.mspx
Right click on one of the csrss.exe process and select Properties. Then select the Threads tab.
Cause the computer to freeze, then let us know what's showing in the Threads tab once it freezes.
Then do the same for the other csrss.exe process

FWIW - on my Vista x64 system, I've got 2 csrss.exe processes. Here's the specs on them:

csrss.exe with PID: 748
contains multiple Threads of winsrv.dll and CSRSRV.dll

csrss.exe with PID: 800
contains one Thread of cdd.dll, and multiple Threads of winsrv.dll and CSRSRV.dll

I have a very similar problem, if i adjust my volume sometimes, the volume control in both the taskbar and the up and down keys go unresponsive. I then have to wait a bit for it to adjust to what i pressed 10-15 minutes ago. I also have a Toshiba Laptop, with a Realtek sound.

I know this is an older thread, and I already tried the listed solutions. I checked MS site, and the dl'd the patch, but when I ran it , got message it didn't apply to my system.

Whenever I try to adjust the volume via system tray, the slider disappears, and then both the taskbar and system tray become unresponsive. I can clear it by logging off and then logging back on, but that sometimes doesn't help, as I can't save any work that has been minimized to the task bar or system tray.

Acer Aspire 5735, running Vista Home Premium, SP1, all drivers up to date.