Follow-up on uninteniotionally muted wave sounds

Originally posted on June 30, but with no on-topic follow-ups that need
to be linked in the same thread.

Is there a shortcut key that mutes wave sounds?

I didnt' get any replies except the one with the Apparently Arabic
Atrribution lines. Discussion of that was interesting, but it didnt'
solve my problem.

Four times now in the last week, I've found a check mark in the mute box
for wave sounds,

It happened again, a half hour ago.

The first time it took a while to figure this out, while I kept turning
the sound on in the systray and the control panel of the webariod
program I use. RadoMaximus. I've used RadioMaximus and everything else
for a year. I don't know of anything that's changed.

My only guess so far is that there's a hotkey that does this. I Have no
extra hotkey software installed, however.

This time I had just closed Skype.

Skype gave me some trouble this time. I listen to webradio, using
RadioMaximus. I had answered the real telephone, so I had muted all the
sound on the computer, but had not muted RadioM, which can be done
separately. When I dialed with Skype, I could hear other sounds over
the Skype dial noises. I went looking for a webpage that was playing
unwanted video, a frequent annoyance, but couldn't find. Atter the
third time starting to call with Skype, I realized that Skype itself was
turning on these other noises, and that it was doing so by turning off
the Windows Mute, so then my RadioM which was not muted could be heard.
So I muted RadioM and I could use Skype just fine.

I think that Skype's turning off windows mute is a good thing, and
turning it back on later if it had been on before is also a good thing.
So I don't want them to change this feature. It's my responsibility to
mute RadioM. I don't know how this involves wav files specifically,
though,

But after I finished my Skype call and closed Skype, and unmuted RadioM,
nothing came out. No sound. I unmuted Windows, and still no sound.
Sure enough, wav files (but not any other sounds) were muted. As shown
when one right clicks on the speaker in the systray and chooses Open
Volume Control.

I've been using Skype a lot lately, since I had a fight with my long
distance carrier, So it was probably Skype all these other times too
and it must be a problem with Skype. I just got a new version of it 2
or 3 weeks ago, maybe when the problem started. (My first post was 10
days ago, and I'd had the problem for a few days) I will send them
pretty much this same post. This is a one or three-line error and
shouldn't be hard for them to find.

So there was something that changed, the version of Skype and maybe my
increased use of Skype were relevant changes.

Maybe some googler with the same problem will find his solution here,
but maybe they'll fix Skype before anyone else looks.


Do you think this problem with Skype would affect all the other windows
OSes too? Not just XP?