NS_E_NO_AUDIODATA (0XC00D1B89) — No audio data received for seconds

1. Audio driver time-out or misconfiguration

What's actually happening here is your audio device goes quiet for 5–10 seconds. Windows Media Player or another app sees the silence and assumes the stream died, so it throws NS_E_NO_AUDIODATA. The most common trigger: you paused a video, walked away for a minute, and when you came back, the audio card had powered itself off to save power.

This is especially common on laptops with Realtek or Conexant audio chipsets. The power management setting for your audio device tells Windows: "If nobody talks to me for 2 seconds, shut down my DMA engine." And once it shuts down, the next audio packet gets ignored, then the next, and within a few seconds the media player gives up and shows the error.

The fix:

1. Open Device Manager (Win+X → Device Manager).
2. Expand Sound, video and game controllers.
3. Right-click your audio device (e.g., Realtek High Definition Audio) → Properties → Power Management tab.
4. Uncheck "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power."
5. Click OK and restart your media player.

This alone fixes maybe 60% of cases. The reason step 3 works is that Windows 10 and 11 aggressively power-gate PCI devices when idle, and audio controllers don't always wake back up fast enough for real-time playback. Once you disable the power-off, the audio chip stays ready, and the error stops.

If the Power Management tab isn't visible, that means your driver doesn't expose it — skip to the next cause.

2. Corrupted or missing audio codec

NS_E_NO_AUDIODATA doesn't always mean silence on the wire. Sometimes the audio stream is arriving, but the decoder can't parse it. The file or stream might use a codec that Windows Media Player doesn't natively support — like FLAC, Opus, or certain AAC variants. What you're seeing is the player receiving packets, but it can't turn them into sound, so after several seconds it reports no audio data.

I've seen this most often with MKV files that have AC3 or DTS audio tracks. Windows 10 and 11 don't ship with AC3 or DTS decoders unless you buy the Dolby Access or DTS Sound Unbound app from the Microsoft Store. So the file plays video fine, but audio remains silent, then boom — the error.

The fix:

• Install the K-Lite Codec Pack (Basic) — it's free, lightweight, and adds the missing decoders. Grab it from codecguide.com. During install, choose "Lite" profile — you don't need the extra player or filters.
• After install, open Windows Media Player and try the same file. If it still fails, open Tools → Options → DVD (yes, that tab) and set the audio decoder to "LAV Audio Decoder" if it's listed.

If you don't want a codec pack, use VLC media player instead. It bundles its own decoders and doesn't rely on system codecs. VLC handles NS_E_NO_AUDIODATA by simply resyncing, so the error never surfaces. But the real fix for WMP users is the codec pack.

3. Audio format mismatch between source and output

This one's trickier. The error can appear when the audio format in the file (say, 96 kHz sample rate, 24-bit depth) is something your sound card or HDMI receiver can't handle. Windows tries to resample, but if the resampling fails silently, the audio pipeline stalls, and after a few seconds you get the NS_E error.

I've hit this with hi-res FLAC files on a system using a USB DAC that only supports 48 kHz. The file says 96kHz, the DAC says 48kHz, and Windows' audio engine (sndvol32.exe) drops the ball without any user-visible error. The media player just sees silence.

The fix:

1. Right-click the speaker icon in the system tray → Sounds → Playback tab.
2. Select your active playback device (Speakers or Headphones) → Properties → Advanced tab.
3. Under Default Format, change from "24 bit, 192000 Hz (Studio Quality)" to 16 bit, 44100 Hz (CD Quality) or 16 bit, 48000 Hz (DVD Quality).
4. Uncheck "Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device" and also uncheck "Give exclusive mode applications priority".
5. Click Apply, OK, and restart your media player.

The reason step 3 works: many onboard sound chips and USB audio devices handle 44.1 or 48 kHz flawlessly, but choke on 96+ kHz due to driver limitations. By dropping to a standard CD-quality format, you eliminate resampling issues. The exclusive mode unchecked prevents apps from bypassing the Windows mixer (which is actually good at format conversion).

Quick-reference summary

Try these in order. If none work, check if your audio driver is from 2015 — those old HD Audio drivers from Realtek are notoriously buggy. Update to the latest from your motherboard vendor's site, not from Windows Update, which often pushes generic Microsoft drivers that miss chipset-specific fixes.