Could malware impact sound drivers? Noticed speaker issues after suspicious pop-up?

Hi AVG Community,

I’ve recently started experiencing an issue with my Windows laptop’s speakers — the sound randomly cuts out or becomes muffled, especially after startup. This started happening shortly after I accidentally clicked on a weird pop-up while browsing. I immediately ran an AVG scan, which flagged one minor issue and removed it, but the audio problems are still ongoing.

I’m wondering — is it possible that some form of malware or adware could have affected my audio drivers or system settings?

As part of my troubleshooting, I tried this site I found online that uses audio frequencies to clean out the speakers. It seemed to help a little, which makes me think maybe it’s a hardware/dust issue — but I still don’t want to rule out a software or security concern.

Has anyone else experienced something similar? Would a deeper scan or reinstalling drivers be the next best step?

Thanks in advance!