SndVol.exe freezes constantly; short vid clip included to illustrate

LookingForAnswe

New Member
(Apologies in advance, because I have tried so many fixes found on these forums and others but nothing works. I am hoping by including a small video clip someone will recognize the problem and help me with a fix.)

Alright this problem is frustrating me to no end, here are my specs:

Windows Vista Ultimate x64
E8400 3.0ghz
8gigs of Ram
ATI HD 4870 (using its sound over HDMI)

I get sound fine, that isn't the problem. The problem is that SndVol.exe constantly freezes up (especially when hitting the mute button in it) and then becomes unusable. I'm not able to un-mute the sound, and the slider bar for the volume stops working entirely.

---> Short video recorded with Camtasia and uploaded to Tinypic.com to illustrate what is happening. Video - TinyPic - Free Image Hosting, Photo Sharing & Video Hosting

Also when I right click and select Open Volume Mixer, it says no device is installed. Yet clearly in the video when I hover over Sndvol.exe in the tray it tells me it is receiving ATI HDMI Output and lets me know what driver is being used. The only way to change the volume is to right click the SndVol.exe in the system tray, go to playback devices and change it (by listening to how loud sound of a song gets).

The problem with this is, if it was muted before freezing, I can't unmute it anymore. Which means I have to reboot every time it freezes. Rebooting every day just to fix Sndvol.exe or multiple times per day, just to have sound is a huge unnecessary pain. (Microsoft needs to re-create their sound controls, there are too many threads online on hundreds of forums with "how to fix" threads that don't fix it.)
 

My Computer

Edit - Formatting fixed, sorry for the double post. I had No-Script running and it was blocking my post from being formatted properly.

Sorry for the messiness of the above post, I hit enter and created paragraphs but it somehow killed them all and forced it into one big mess. How do I fix it?
 

My Computer

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