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

Like wise I am having the same problem here, XP with BOSE Companion 5. My experience with USB have not been a pleasant one. During one of the incident (long story short), I discovered that the USB port performance itself was erratic and unstable. I had 8 ports and all of them perform differently. What I did was simply to change to another port and it work fine.

The last and final alternative is to use the 3.5mm analogue jack port to connect to the sound card. USB were never a stable hardware since day 1.

I would be a little more convinced of a hardware failure if the same thing happened with the Vista OS. The Bose was solid as a rock until I upgraded this platform to Win-7 Pro. This is not a random failure. I can produce it at will by simply rebooting Win-7 Pro, or by power cycling the Bose. When the sound crackles and drops out, the software never sees it. Tests appear to run as seen by the green sound-level bar. If I disconnect the Bose from the USB, then the OS knows it's gone. But simply plugging it back in to the USB returns me to the same state (no sound). One symptom that I can't reproduce at will is a high-pitched tone coming from the speakers during boot......sometimes. If I haven't used the speakers before the next shutdown, often I'll get the same squeal for 10-15 seconds. That, in itself doesn't get distorted when booting or shutting down. And it's not consistent. Sometimes, just logically changing what speakers are the default speakers and/or the default communications device can cause the squeal to start. That appears to indicate that, if left alone, the squeal would continue indefinitely. The volume of the squeal can be adjusted by the volume level bars in the volume mixer. What the source is, I haven't the foggiest. Since it's not easily reproducible, without drawing up a test plan to include all possible scenarios or sequence of events, the source may be unknown for a long time. I do know that by using different USB ports and buses, the behavior is the same. The only time I thought that I'd cracked this nut was when I disabled ALL audio devices, and bring up one at a time. The OS then made the Bose the default audio device, and not the default composite device which it originally was configured for during the OS load. That in itself moved the Bose out from under a Root Hub, and made it  USB Composite Device. Then, the Bose started to work normally. I had played several CD's in succession with no issues whatsoever. Then, over time and after who knows how many reboots, the Bose slowly started to crackle again. Within a couple of days, the sound ceased altogether. Insuring that the logical configuration hadn't changed in terms of the USB structure, I tried the same tests as I had previously run. I got the same results as when I first loaded Win-7 Pro. Again, a reboot will bring the speakers back, as would a power cycle of the Bose, but will start crackling more and more until it cuts out. A very minimal level of sound will extend the amount of time before the crackling starts, and also the rate of degradation.

Another call to Bose gave me some information that I did not know, as well s another experiment to try. Part of the power-cycle process includes disconnecting the puck from the sub-woofer, after removing power. Wait 30 or more seconds, plug in the puck, and apply power to the Bose. I'm not sure that I see the logic there. But that's the official procedure. Bose also recommended that I run an audio cable from the PC to the input of the puck. After a software adjustment, I got good stereo sound out of the Bose. No issues at all. But I didn't want to give up the Dolby 5.1 configuration. Once back to using the USB configuration, the same problem came back. When I ran the Dolby 5.1 test, the animated speakers reflected actual sound tones for that configuration. On the second pass of the same test, the sound degraded to zero after starting to crackle, although the test was perfectly happy and continued to assume that the Bose was performing as it should. The OS showed no issues with the Bose, still had contact via USB, and showed an error code of 0 in the properties/details.

While on the phone with Bose, they informed me that I could send in the sub-woofer for a flat $50 (I believe) repair. However, they still don't believe the Bose is at fault since it worked just fine under Vista. If it worked fine in their lab, I'd be out $50 and still be stuck with the problem which apparently has been a known issue in one form or another since 2009.

i would think if it keeps cutting out, often, i would buy a new set and swap out your non working set.

BJ's & Sams Club has them now in stock.....

just an idea that some of your issues are hardware failures, vs software failures.

Bose being top of the line, makes people think they will last forever, they are able to blow out just like any other speaker. Just as the amp, and computer circuits can short.

Unfortunately,I'm still where I was when I wrote my June 3rd post. I've reviewed the potential solutions, made changes to power settings, adjusted minimum volume level to 50, changed USB cable (was, and still is a single 6' cable), changed the power cable, although a "special" cable which I have a couple extras, and also changed the power source/outlet from my UPS to straight wall-power per Bose recommendation. Nothing has helped. When booted, the first sound wav file played is clear, the second a bit distorted, and from there, the quality just deteriorates and cuts out completely within 15 seconds of playing test sounds via Sounds/Playback. If I disable the sound, I can come back hours later, enble the sound, and it will work as described at boot time. In other words, the sound doesn't "logically" deteriorate until sound is actually played on the Bose. I've found only two methods of recovery. Either power-cycle the Bose, waiting ~30 seconds between removal of power, and plugging back in; or rebooting Win-7 Pro. Either will work without the other. The important piece of this puzzle is that the sound worked PERFECTLY when running Vista 64-bit Home Premium. At one point, I had both the Vista system disk installed, and the separate Win-7 Pro system disk. I could easily switch back and forth. The Bose consistently was solid on the Vista OS, but consistently failed on the Win-7 Pro OS. That one change of switching OS's was all it took to make, or break the Bose. Unfortunately, I've since overwritten the Vista OS disk. Perhaps it used a driver that I could have migrated to Win-7 Pro. Also, if I use the puck on the Bose, and use a headset, the sound is fine. Go figure.

At this time, I do not have my headset to try the experiment stated in the above post, although what I did with the headphones earlier on accomplishes the same thing. I don't believe that the Bose is going to sleep itself. When the sound just degrades from the start to a point where it cuts out, it almost indicates a bus contention problem. With the Bose being its own USB Composite Device, per the Device Manager, and NOT under a root hub as originally configured at build time, there's nothing left to compete for the bus.

Bottom line is that all is the same since my June post.