After Effects disabling audio from my computer

Hi,

Lately, it's been a real pain working with After Effects. Most of my time is spent restarting my computer because every time I open my project and try to preview it by pressing the spacebar, this happens: I move back by one frame, and the animation doesn't play. I know this is a common bug (the oldest post about this issue is 7 years old).

So, as suggested 7 YEARS ago, I changed my audio hardware settings in the preferences. For your information, I'm using my laptop, which only has an SSD plugged in — no headphones, no HDMI monitor, just a basic laptop with an SSD. Perfect. Now, the preview is working, and the animation plays, but wait... there’s no sound!

That's odd. Let me run a quick YouTube video to test if the issue is with my project or my hardware, and as expected: no sound from YouTube. The same thing happens with Spotify and anything else that should produce sound.

I’ve tried closing and reopening After Effects, reinstalling it, changing my RAM, and disabling every background application. The only thing that works is restarting the entire computer, launching the project, making two changes, and then restarting the cycle. Love it.

In short, with a fresh project (3 compositions and 1 audio file), I can't make more than 3 modifications without needing to restart my computer. Because, suddenly, either the sound is deactivated on my computer, or the preview refuses to preview (thanks to a bug that's been around for over half a decade — thank you, Adobe).

Ps: I'm trying to do screenshot of my audio devices, and windows is not cooperating while the project is open. My parameters won't open or they crash

as for the required bullet point:

• Adobe After Effects version number: After Effects 25.1 (having this issue since 24.6.4)
• Operating system: Windows 11