Audio Not Working At All

[ReverendMalice]

Greetings, I am running Windows Vista Home Premium and VLC 3.0.2. Not long ago, the audio from my VLC media player recently stopped working at all. I've tried tinkering with the audio settings, resetting all preferences and cache files multiple times and even uninstalling and re-installing but nothing has fixed the issue. Every single VLC file I try to open (.mp4, .ogg, among others), even if it doesn't contain any video, does not play any sound whatsoever. The sound is clearly not muted and my speakers and headphones are working fine, since I'm able to hear videos/music with other programs perfectly well. I've searched the FAQ, Wiki and to no avail since no solution has been able to help and I haven't found a solution that works in the forums so far. I would really appreciate it if a solution could be provided since the program seemed to work just fine until then.

[VLCwin7User]

The first thing I would check is the system's mixer. On my Win 8, I have a speaker icon in the system tray, at the right of the task bar. While VLC is running, right-click the speaker icon, and select Open Volume Mixer. Check and see if the volume slider is pushed up for VLC.

[ReverendMalice]

The first thing I would check is the system's mixer. On my Win 8, I have a speaker icon in the system tray, at the right of the task bar. While VLC is running, right-click the speaker icon, and select Open Volume Mixer. Check and see if the volume slider is pushed up for VLC.

Thanks for the response, however the volume mixer is pushed up for VLC, I even tried to push it up all the way in case it was just way too quiet, but the volume mixer isn't even registering any sound coming from VLC as if the sound was muted, despite it clearly not being that way as I've muted and unmuted the VLC file a few times while playing a video and there is no difference.

[Lotesdelere]

Rename the executable from VLC.exe to VLC2.exe and try again.

If it works then for some reason VLC has been muted in the sound mixer settings.
Read more about this here:
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=61015&p=212629#p212398

[ReverendMalice]

Renaming the executable unfortunately didn't work, however I looked into further solutions in the thread you linked and managed to find a solution. I simply needed to change the audio output to DirectX and restart VLC (I was under the impression that the changes would apply immediately after pressing Save) and now it finally works. I'm not sure why the Automatic setting stopped working all of a sudden but at least it's fixed now. Thanks a lot for helping.