Mostly all audio is unable to be played even with Ableton closed

[cirrus96]

I have Ableton installed on my PC, and every time I turn it on, various problems start to occur in different aspects of my PC:

- Spotify and Groove Music are unable to play music
- YouTube videos do play with audio but the volume slider in the top left hand corner of the screen stays on top of all other programs until the tab with the playing video is closed
- Soundcloud in my browser won't play anything
- New windows open minimised (I have to click their respective icons on the taskbar to have them focused)
- Tabs in my browser and windows in my taskbar are unable to be moved around

The temporary fix for these problems that I've found is to restart my computer, but it is quite a hassle to do that every time I turn my PC on. I've tried changing my audio device in Ableton (I previously used ASIO4ALL and I switched to FlexASIO) but that didn't seem to work. I noticed that, after not opening Ableton for about a week, the problem was fixed for some reason but after opening Ableton again, it started happening again. I've looked everywhere online for this problem but nobody seems to have the same problem and I'm starting to get desperate. Is there anything that I could do to fix this?

[[jur]]

That's quite a cray one!
Are you using any midi controller?

You coud try uninstalling and re-installing Live, but since your problem looks very very specific i think you should ask Support for some help

[AbletonMASCHINE]

IMO that's only the exclusive mode in your Windows audio settings.

And this is good because other audio sources as you've mentioned can generate issues with any DAW if they run in parallel.

Nevertheless it's possible - but not recommended - to switch off that exclusive mode.

[cirrus96]

That's quite a cray one!
Are you using any midi controller?

Yes, I'm using a Nektar SE-49 as a MIDI controller.

[[jur]]

That's quite a cray one!
Are you using any midi controller?

Yes, I'm using a Nektar SE-49 as a MIDI controller.

And did you try without it?

[craigc]

I had a similar issue but it ended up being my audio interface.
I started with the Focusrite 2i2 and never had any issues
Ended up getting an AxeI/O controller for recording guitar and that's when the trouble started.
After running Ableton with the Axe, no other audio would play. I had to shut down Ableton...the interface could only handle 1 at a time. Once I shut down Live other audio would play but not always. Very quirky.
Still have the issue...haven't worked on it much. I actually switched back to the 2i2 and haven't had any problems since then.