Windows 7 and Bose Companion 5 speaker system losing sound intermittently.

Thanks Lee. As a whole, this HP PC should run circles around just about anything. As purchased, it had 8GB RAM, and a .5TB hard drive. It also came with Vista 64-bit which all by itself was a huge nightmare over the long haul. However, it DID run the Bose Companion-5 speakers with no issues. Even when the PC was acting like a real pig, the sound was unaffected. I lost track of how many system events ended up in the system error log file. Occasionally, I would receive a message stating that there was a "fix" available to correct some number of these "events". When I tried to find the fix to download, the usual response was something to the effect of "No Fix Found for This Error". Surprise!! If I was Microsoft, I'd be embarrassed by the number of bugs found over time in Vista. Most likely, some fixes created more bugs. Hard to prove either way since it's virtually impossible to contact a competent software engineer at Microsoft since they're held several layers deep in the support structure. To pay $250/hr to just start a dialogue with Microsoft is ludicrous! The front line of support simply takes your description of the problem, types it in to a "problem" database, and gives you an assortment of possibilities of what could be causing the problem. As your tab at $250/hr increases, at some point the front-line rep will give up, and you can start all over again with the second level. I have no idea how many layers must be "conquered" at $250/hr chatting with reps most likely not fluent in English. I have to think that ordinary consumers aren't going to foot a bill of that magnitude, and most likely not get anything for it. However, that's Microsoft's "plan". If it's broken, go BUY an upgrade. Of course there is no guarantee that what you're buying will solve anything! When I upgraded from Vista 64-bit to Win-7 Pro 64-bit, I was astonished to find that devices which came with my PC were not supported any longer. What! I'm not talking about anything extravagant. For one, just the only CDRW/DVD-RW Blu-Ray player that came with the system that wasn't even 3 years old yet. Win-7 Pro wanted nothing to do with that drive. I can't even use it as a simple CDROM drive. The only solution is to go BUY more hardware. So a new device supported on Vista 64-bit has all of a sudden lost the device support one OS later? I suppose hardware sales and software sales go hand in hand. Microsoft is going to win over the consumers, hands down. Amazing how the millionaires are made doing business like that! Not hard to see at all. Now, it appears that Microsoft is going into the hardware business. Notice that consumer products are coming out branded by Microsoft! If they can't develop and support a reliable operating system, imagine what kind of support you'll get on these "package deals". Once the warranty is up, throw it away and BUY something new. This is really a sad way of doing business. I suppose that if the consumers didn't keep forking out more money supporting Microsoft, they wouldn't last too long.  Apple is getting more and more attractive........

In all honesty I don't know what else to tell you.It surtenly sounds like you have covered all your bases.

All I can tell you is that I am running Windows 7 Premiume.I'm not all that PC friendly but I was runing only 2 mgs of ram on a 500 g hd.As far as the rest of the guts in that thing I havent the fogiest idea of what was what or did what..

I found that tip some where on line so I went out and purchased the USB V 2 port,came home and installed it and I hadn't had a single interuption since.

Sorry I can't help any further so good luck with yours

L.

Many thanks to all who have contributed to this chain. I fully understand the reasoning behind using a USB V2.0 port, although my original Vista 64-bit OS that came with my current HP PC didn't have any problems interfacing with the Bose Companion 5. For an otherwise crappy OS, the Bose had no issues. Only when I upgraded the OS to Win-7 Pro did the Bose have an immediate issue. I had done a clean install of Win-7 Pro on a new scratch disk, and retained (at the time) the original Vista OS disk. I could boot either OS disk, and would have perfect performance of the Bose on the Vista OS disk, and the very disappointing functional failure when booting the Win-7 Pro OS disk. To date, no new USB driver has been released for Win-7 Pro. My PC is just old enough that, as far as I can tell thus far, does not have USB V2.0 hardware to support USB V2.0 functionality. The PC came configured full-up with no expansion slots remaining. Plugging in a USB V2.0 external hub into a USB V1.x port obviously is not going to gain anything. It's a clumsy way to do things, but I suppose I could build up another Vista OS disk, and make the PC dual boot. Then, I could enjoy the Bose while booted with Vista.........and not when booted with Win-7 Pro. Functionally, that would work. Practically speaking, absolutely not. For starters, Win-7 Pro boots in a fraction of the time that Vista does, or ever did. I could take a nap waiting for Vista to come up! For troubleshooting of the Bose in the beginning, having both OS disks made sense. In my previous posts, I documented all of the efforts, to include the logical USB configuration changes. At one point, it appeared that things looked optimistic. That didn't last though. My last conversation with Bose brought to light that it was possible that the Bose itself had developed a problem. However, taking into account that the Bose worked flawlessly under the Vista OS pretty well threw that theory out the window. Unfortunately for me, Bose was only able to test the Companion-5 with a Win-7 (Standard/Home??) platform. That worked! Win-7 Pro, unfortunately more money spent on my part that should have bought me more, but ended up giving me less..MUCH less.

Just to say that I tried it, I'm taking an older platform, installing XP-Pro, and will try the Bose testing again. Surely that won't be USB V2.0 either. But I believe the Bose worked on that platform at the time. If push comes to shove, I'll just have a dedicated PC used for music only. This is starting to sound like a return to the dark ages. But if Microsoft can't fix a functionality that was proven to work flawlessly on a given platform running Vista, but failed to work on Win-7 Pro using all of the same hardware with firmware brought up to date, then I'm not going to cave in and go spend yet more money to buy a new PC, most likely with Win-8 that MAY solve the problem with the Bose. However, no guarantee for anything.  Granted, I would have USB V2.0 or even V3.0. But Win-8? Another unknown! That seems to be the trap nowadays. "Change" that comes out seems to force spending of significantly more money to upgrade hardware, or an OS, or BOTH. Spending more money for "change" sounds like other "change" that's also costing more money, but wasn't supposed to. Swapping out hardware and software every 2-4 years is not my idea of spending money wisely. After all, XP has lasted many years, and is still out there. Why?? It WORKS! Why not stick with something that works, and build on it rather than just reinventing the wheel every couple of years. Whatever happened to forward and backward compatible?? I surely don't see it nowadays in the Microsoft world. On to researching Apple platforms...........

This may all sound cynical. Maybe that comes from being in the field for 40+ years.........mostly NOT PC's, but REAL computers. Take HP, and go back in history. Don't stop at Compaq. Keep going. It's amazing what you will find. Ahhhhhh the good ol' days..........

Hello Dave and a Happy and Prosperious New Year to you and your family

The Bose Companion 5 needs to run on it's own USB 2 Port.Once I did the install of the new port I haven't had any issues with it since.It now plays Music/Movies etc flawlessly.

Oh how I love my Bose (insert happy dance here)

Lee