Question / Help OBS fails to capture system audio

[tchkb]

I've seen this problem discussed on many occasions both here and on Youtube, but none of the solutions worked (except reinstalling OBS, but I don't want to do that unless nothing else works).

OBS had been working properly until one day when I unplugged the headphones I had used up to that point and switched them out for new ones, with a microphone to record my commentary. The mic is working properly, but now OBS refuses to capture any sort of audio from Windows itself, even after I went back to my older headphones. I think the headphone switch happened before I started OBS, but I'm not sure.
Unfortunately I accidentally deleted the log from the last recording session before the issue, but still have log from second-to-last session, as well as the very first one where it appeared. There's a bunch of driver names that are not in English, but I'm pretty sure they're correctly selected.
An extra tidbit - these two squares in the screenshot keep flashing between red and yellow once I open a game up. Also I record in a mode where I capture the part of desktop where the game window (in windowed mode) pops up upon loading.

 

[Stream Doctor]

Try running your game and OBS in Admin mode. I've seen OBS not pick up War Thunder audio due to this very reason.

 

[tchkb]

Still doesn't work.

 

[Narcogen]

The yellow flashing squares is what I see when a device is selected but has been muted outside of OBS, or is having its output suppressed by a filter.

For instance, if I add a microphone and then add a silencer VST to it and set the threshold all the way down, when there is mic activity those lights flash, but there are no levels and no audio.

Did OBS request and receive permissions for microphone use? This was added by a (relatively) recent Windows update.