No sound on youtube

This must have been happening for a while.  Every time I tried to play a song or two on youtube, the video would play but no sound would come out.

I had though that something might have corrupted in the sound department but was too lazy to get it fixed.

So, it might have went on for weeks if not months.

Finally, today, after checking out a movie on tudou.com, which played just fine, I decided to see whether the same clip is available on youtube.  That was when did it came to my attention...

Oops... it seems like this is youtube specific, though, bowser-independent (e.g., Chrome, Firefox) on a win 7 x64.

I had intended to get the issue resolved methodologically so that I could identify what might have caused the issue.  Unfortunately, after too many rounds of unsuccessful attempts, I lost patience and stopped checking... though... at some point, abracadabra... youtube found its voice back and the red cross no longer appears next to the volume control icon! 8-O lol

Though I don't know what I did exactly that work, one thing I am sort of sure is that the solution provided by google didn't really do it... because that was one of the rounds that I did check... though, computers have their own mind and never say never.

At the same time, it doesn't mean you should not try it out either since, many a time, although the symptoms are the same, the causes might be different.

Following are some of the things I did.  Please be noted that installations and uninstallations are involved, always try to follow it with the reboot thing:

1. I uninstalled google talk
2. I checked to see whether the sound settings are correct
3. I downloaded the uninstaller from Adobe website to uninstall the existing flash player and installed the current version.\
4. I checked to see whether third party flash contents were allowed on my machine through the Global Storage Setting Panel and they have always been set to be allowed.

5. I got rid of all cookies, browser history and the internet temp files on Chrome but not on Firefox (yet, it is working on Firefox as well. as a result, judge the relevance of this step yourself. lol) 
6. I deleted the following 2 folders where flash stores its temporary files:

• C:\Documents and Settings\%UserName%\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player
• C:\Documents and Settings\%UserName%\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player

Please be reminded that, after a few rounds, I stopped check real youtube movies but used the commercial movie at the upper right side of youtube home page as the "visual guide."  Unfortunately, it was not a good indicator since, up to now, the red cross is still appearing next to the volume control icon.

  

Up to the last step or step 6, I was really tempted to play with the regedit thing despite my reluctance to play with the registry.  Then, I clicked on to check on one of the movies again... and that was when I found my abracadabra moment!

Again, good luck with your troubleshooting and wish your youtube find its voice back soon! :-)