Harry I had the exact same problem and finally figured it out. Might be the same problem as you. turns out my speakers were turned off on my computer, so when sony tried to play a sound it just froze. Nothing! I “solved” this by plugging in my earphones into the audio jack of the computer.
You would think if the computer detected no sound device sony would I dunno either tell you there’s no sound keep working or print an error message but nope just freezes up.
So try plugging in your earphones might help.