PC crashes when switching audio output device

In laymans terms, my friggin' PC crashes whenever I switch from headphones to speakers or vise versa!

Why the hell does it do that!? It's never done that before but it does it all the time now. It only started two days ago and as a gamer/music listenerdownloaderperson I require the changes.

 

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Strange. You can get a little adapter so you can keep both plugged in simultaneously all the time. Are those externally powered and amplified speakers?

 

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They are indeed externally powered speakers

 

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That obviously shouldn't happen, sounds like there is some form of charge being caused by the board thats causing a kind of short. I would guess it's the energy usually used to generate the speaker output, I'm sure you might have messed with microphone connection before where you can tap on a connection and it will generate a loud noise.

In this instance I would suggest looking at your Sound card, make sure that it's connction hasn't been messed up through being forced or that it's shorting itself through the way the card is perpendicular to the metal fixing strip at it's back.
(The usual one is that metal fixing strip shorts with the female port, which you might have to use my old method of placing some bluetac to act as an insulator, it's not brillant for electrics in the sense that it will catch fire if the charge is high enough, but it is good enough for speaker connections, just don't get any in the socket.)

 

Uhm...yeah. I think I know now why it's doing it. Last week when I put in my headphones I pused the card back. This puzzled me, why on earth has it been pushed back?! Well a few weeks before I got a new motherboard (yes, my PC is having a massive overhaul, brand new GeForce last night baby!) and I guess I forgot to screw in my sound card...

But I'll try your solution Stryder before I start to panic more.

 

The only other thing I can think of is an electrical problem with your speakers changing their impedance and/or feeding back some voltage. Got another set of speakers you could try?