Random Audio bugs (svchost Windows Audio crashing/hanging?)

Kywim · December 5, 2018

Hello!

In the last week I've experienced some issues with my audio on Windows 10. It has happened twice for now. (with a week in between).

The first time, It happened when I tried to call a friend on Discord. After starting the call, while it was loading, it did 2 things:

I powered my bluetooth headphones off to use my gamer headphone
I plugged my microphone in

After that, I noticed that Discord froze. I had to force it to quit, and then things got weird: I couldn't hear audio anymore on my computer, be it on my QC35 or my other headphones. Youtube videos load indefinitely, Windows can't play songs (either infinite loading or some weird "filesystem" error), etc. The volume icon in the bottom also had a red X over it. After running the windows sound troubleshooter, the red X disappeared, but the volume did not come back.

And the last time it happened when I powered on my QC35 to watch a show. I didn't hear sound through it and ta-da! It was because the same problem came back! This time I went more in depth with my troubleshooting and noticed a few things

The windows audio troubleshooter pretends to have fixed the problem, but it actually hasn't fixed it.
I can't play the test tone in the audio settings ("Failed to play the test tone")
The problem seems to come from the Windows Audio service. I tried to restart it, but it hung up and refused to stop. (Stuck on "stopping") I had no other choice but to reboot, and that fixed the problem.

Event viewer logs:

The Service Control Manager tried to take a corrective action (Restart the service) after the unexpected termination of the Windows Audio service, but this action failed with the following error: 
An instance of the service is already running.
-------------------------------------------------
The Windows Audio service terminated unexpectedly. It has done this 2 time(s). The following corrective action will be taken in 120000 milliseconds: Restart the service.
-------------------------------------------------
The program svchost.exe version 10.0.17134.1 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Security and Maintenance control panel.
Process ID: bd0
Start Time: 01d48be754e98fc9
Termination Time: 1
Application Path: C:\Windows\System32\svchost.exe
Report Id: f8114eef-ae6a-42d0-bf11-116a66797577
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

Other useful information:

The headset I use to watch video/listen to music is the Bose QC35 II. It's a bluetooth headset which is connected to my computer using a bluetooth dongle.
My other headset is a VModa M100. That's the one I use for gaming, it's plugged using a normal audio jack cable.
I have a Yeti USB microphone.
- The first time the problem happened, I plugged it in when starting the Discord call, so maybe it's not unrelated to the crash?
- The second time, I had left Discord 10 minutes ago so it was still plugged in.
Security and maintenance control panel screenshot: http://prntscr.com/lqr35w
- It also shows that I had some updates installed 2 days before, and somes the same day that the problem appeared for the first time. (But the updates that were installed the same day were just updates for some windows builtin apps) http://prntscr.com/lqra0h http://prntscr.com/lqra9v

I'd like to at least know if it's a hardware or software problem. I bet it's a software one because this started about a week ago, and this build has been running fine since late october. (So it ran fine for +- 2/3 weeks before that), but it's like to confirm my doubts.

Thank you!