Hello,
For those of you who have ever had or are still having issues with sound on Windows, this post might help you. When you buy a laptop these days, you often have the problem of your screen reader cutting off at the end or beginning of words. This is because of the power options configured by default by microsoft. I'm on Windows 11, but I presume these instructions will work for Windows 10 too. Go to 'power, sleep and battery settings', and find the 'power mode' combo box. By default, either 'balanced' or 'best power efficiency' is selected, however you need to select the 'best performance' option. You can just close the Window after that, there isn't an 'OK' button. Next, uninstall a software called 'Microsoft automated power manager' which seems to come pre-installed on all new machines. Uninstalling this won't affect usual power settings like sleep and so on, however it will get rid of the tendency for sound to keep cutting out. I've got an HP machine, and I also uninstalled a software called Star Energy or something like that, in the hopes it might help further. I usually uninstall most stuff that comes with a new machine anyway. I know about Silenzio and I think there's an add on for NVDA that adds continuous noise to your soundcard in the background. There might be a setting in JAWS too, but I prefer this way of doing things, because it covers all bases if you use more than one screen reader.
Hope that helps.
By Tara, 20 March, 2024
Forum
Windows
Comments
Thanks for this
Hi Tara,
Interestingly enough, I recently obtained a Ryzen-based HP laptop for some Certs I am working on through Cisco. I also use NVDA and have noticed where audio seems to cut out randomly, which is rather frustrating when in the middle of a Zoom lecture. Following your advice, and will report back if NVDA has any audio-related issues.
Thanks again for this post. 😀
I'll check on microsoft automated power
yeah, I have this issue and JAWS solved it keeping microphone active with voice assistant.
But if uninstalling that Microsoft automate power management solves the issue, I'll try it - I have it on my Surface Pro 9.
So I'll deactivate jaws voice assistant then, as it drains battery I think
Laptops with touch screens and uninstalling bloatware
Hi Brian and all,
If you've got a laptop with a touch screen or mouse and volume controls which are touch only, you might be inadvertently pressing stuff. This might be causing you problems too. But, you might be able to disable some of that stuff. If not, well I hope uninstalling that automated power thingy and adjusting the power mode as stipulated above resolve the issue! I would recommend to anyone buying a new laptop to spend a few hours getting rid of all the bloatware. It really is worth it. It might seem like a long and drawn out process, but God it's worth every minute. And get rid of all that anti-virus rubbish, I want to use a stronger word but possibly can't on here. Windows Defender is perfectly sufficient for home use, including working from home. Every anti-virus program I've ever come across slows down my system considerably, so much so as to be a hindrance. For some uninstallation screens you might need to use the JAWS cursors and NVDA object nav a bit, I had to do this to get rid of that Mcafee rubbish. I think I even had to use Narrator for things, but it was worth it. I uninstalled everything apart from Microsoft OneDrive, Windows mail and calendar, the drivers and audio stuff. I appreciate 'bloatware' probably isn't the correct term here, but it's the only polite word I can think of for all the rubbish manufacturers and microsoft ship with new laptops.
Re: Windows Defender
With all due respect to anyone who prefers a third-party antivirus software, having recently finished a Cybersecurity CERT with Cisco, I can say that my professor who has been a cybersecurity expert for years, stands behind Windows defender for Windows based machines. 🙂