restarting laptop causes Equalizer APO to fully stop working

[Jynx]

Title ^^
A full clean uninstall reinstall fixes the issue, but if I restart my laptop again, it stops working. I have tried to install all three SFX/EFX, SFX/MFX, and LFX/GFX, and none of them fix it. I have “Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device” on and “Enable audio enhancements” on.
The microphone is still checked under the Device Selector and EqualizerAPO.dll still appears under audiodg.exe, but none of the changes inside config.txt are applied.
The only way I can get it working again is by fully uninstalling Equalizer APO, restarting my laptop, and reinstalling it. Then it works until I restart my laptop again.
Would appreciate any help. Please let me know what pictures are needed to help diagnose the issue (and where to take the pictures if needed)!

[Peter Verbeek]

“Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device” This one should be off. If an app is using an audio device in exclusive mode (WASAPI exclusive) all APO's including Equalizer APO will be bypassed. But this probably isn't the issue. A few other things can be done after restarting:

• Check if the DisableProtectedAudioDG key value of the registry key HKEYLOCALMACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Audio remains set to 1.
• Uncheck (if not greyed out) the 2 Use original APO checkboxes (Device Selector -> Click target device -> Check Troubleshooting checkbox -> Uncheck both checkboxes -> Click Ok button to invoke)

[Jynx]

I have unchecked the “Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device” option. I also already had the “Use Original APO” checkboxes unchecked, and the DisableProtectedAudioDG registry value was already set to 1.

I’m not sure whether this helps, but I also asked AI to help troubleshoot. It had me check the modules running under audiodg.exe, and although EqualizerAPO.dll appeared, there was no indication that config.txt was being loaded or executed.

Also, when I install Peace for the first time, Equalizer APO starts working again. However, after I restart my laptop, it breaks again and I have to reinstall it. So whatever Peace does during installation seems to temporarily fix Equalizer APO, but the fix does not survive a restart. I currently have Peace uninstalled since it seemed to be a temporary fix, but just wanted to point that out.

[Peter Verbeek]

Do you have the config.txt file in c:\program files\equalizerapo\config? This is by default but it is possible to change this folder to another one having config.txt although most users don't know how. And I don't advise it.

Anyway, I'm not sure what to make all of it but I think I've seen a similar issue in posts on this forum. I don't know how or if it was resolved.

When it works (after an installation) is there any indication that the config.txt is being processed by EqualizerAPO.dll? Note that I don't even know how to determine that so if you can you're the expert 😃

Peace does nothing at installation. But at first run it creates the line "include: peace.txt" in config.txt. This on its own triggers a reprocessing of this file by EqualizerAPO.dll (as it should). In principle you could use Peace as a trigger (and perhaps its capabilities). When you set it as starting up at computer start up it recreates config.txt triggering EqualizerAPO.dll and so the processing of your commands in config.txt (and included files). If you like that I'll explain (it's very easy to set up, a few clicks).