Depends upon your Windows OS, but on my Win 8.1 laptop with Classic Shell Start Menu, I do Start, Control Panel, Sound, and click on the "Playback" tab (it should open to that), then on the "Speakers" in the list, which then activates the "Properties" button, which I click. From that, click the "Advanced" tab, and you'll see the "Default Format" listed, which in my case says "16-bit, 44100 Hz (CD Quality)" in the drop-down box. Below that section is two tick-boxes for "Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device" and "Give exclusive mode application priority", both of which should be ticked, which is by default also. However, generally speaking, if that is set to "16-bit 48000 Hz", it would usually end up in an audio file that plays at a higher pitch, but does complete, unlike what you are getting. You might find something else amiss. If you by chance have used the 4 gig patch on SH5, remove that, since SH5 is already built to use the additional memory.
Windows used to be capable of on-the-fly sample rate changes from 44.1k to 48k and back, but since the last days of WinXP and the introduction of audio DRM with Vista, it no longer does that. For me, doing multi-track semi-professional audio on my computer in Windows 7 64-bit, I am constantly having to change sample rates when moving from mixing audio / video files, and then to take a break and play the game, and back again, etc. Even the bit-depth setting makes a difference.
