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Initiating a PC reset or refresh in Windows 8 may cause audio noise if music is playing

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Symptoms

Consider the following scenario:
  • You have a UEFI-based PC that is running Windows 8.
  • You are playing music using the Windows 8 Music app or Windows Media Player.
  • You decide to perform a recovery of Windows and under PC Settings you select General and then choose to either "Refresh your PC" or "Remove everything and reinstall Windows".

In this scenario, when you click on the "Get started" button for either option, you may briefly hear static noise in the music playback.


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Cause

When clicking on the "Get Started" button, an EFI firmware call is made to access the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) store in NVRAM so that when a reboot occurs, the recovery process is started. If the EFI firmware takes too long to return from the call, it can lead to audio glitching as the audio playback engine can become starved for CPU time. 

You may also hear the same audio noise during music playback when performing any action that accesses the BCD store, such as running in-box tools MSConfig.exe or BCDEdit.exe.


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Workaround

To work around this issue, stop the playback of music before initiating the recovery process to “Refresh your PC” or "Remove everything and reinstall Windows”.

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Keywords: kb

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Article Info
Article ID : 2829267
Revision : 1
Created on : 1/7/2017
Published on : 3/22/2013
Exists online : False
Views : 243