Reinstate audio function without reinstalling Windows?

1. Run the audio troubleshooter.

This is the easiest thing you can try. If your audio issue is deeply rooted, it will probably not be very helpful to run the audio troubleshooter. It can only fix the simplest possible non-issues such as if you have accidentally muted your speakers and you're unaware of it. In that case, this tool can unmute it for you.

I did not make this tool, so I don't know all of its capabilities. It could for example be able to restart and enable audio related Windows services, and that alone would make it worth a try.

Run control from the Run prompt to open the Control Panel.

Now follow this path.

Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Troubleshooting\Hardware and Sound

Click on the item that says "Playing Audio" and follow the instructions.

2. Ensure that audio related Windows services are running.

Run services.msc from the Run prompt and locate the following two services.

• Windows Audio
• Windows Audio Endpoint Builder

Make sure their Status is "Running" and their Startup Type is set to "Automatic".

3. Reinstall audio device and device drivers.

Open the Device Manager and locate the "Sound, video and game controllers" category and expand it to view audio controllers. Right click on each of them and then click "Uninstall device". If you get the optional check box "Delete the driver software for this device" be sure to check it before you click on Uninstall.

Note: You will have to download and reinstall the audio drivers, especially if you have selected to "delete the driver software for this device".

Go to Action menu, then select "Scan for hardware changes" to re-enable your audio device(s). You may need to reboot the PC, especially if you have selected to delete the device drivers in the previous step.

4. Restore system configuration using a System Restore point.

Run sysdm.cpl from the Run prompt to open System Properties and click on "System Protection" tab. Then click on System Restore, select "Choose a different restore point" and click Next. Then select a restore point whose creation date and time predates the audio issue you're experiencing. Don't select one that's too far back in the past as it could undo more system changes than you would want to.

5. Attempt to manually repair the Windows registry.

Have a look at one of these locations.

• C:\Windows\System32\config\repair
• C:\Windows\System32\config\RegBack

See if you have some files in there with names such as "SAM", "SECURITY", "SOFTWARE", etc. These are your registry hive files. These files contain all the important system configuration parameters and allow Windows to boot correctly, recognize and initialize your system devices. You can use these files in an attempt to repair your Windows registry using various tools Microsoft has released over the years, including RegEdit.

Note: The hive files your system is currently using are stored one level up in the System32\config folder.

Note: This is a very advanced topic, and I would advice against using these techniques if you don't feel comfortable with it. I would not only advice against it because it's an advanced topic, but because the chances of success are slim and you may be wasting your time on this. There is no single tool (to my knowledge) that Microsoft has released that can reliably repair a corrupted Windows registry. The best I know of is RegEdit, but you need to be running it on the system you are trying to repair, or know how to load and unload registry hives offline and make changes that way. It can get really tricky and it's a dirty solution.

Note: Starting with Windows 10 version 1803, Windows no longer uses the RegBack folder to store backup copies of its important registry hive files. This feature has been deprecated and this folder is no longer used.

Note: Don't fool yourself with registry repair tools. They don't do anything useful but make you feel good about your PC, making you think that you're doing something good for your PC. They belong in the same category as "PC Performance Boost" type of applications. There are dozens of these registry repair and cleaning tools on the web, and all they do is remove registry keys and values that are not of any concern to begin with. You can end up screwing up a perfectly healthy Windows installation by using these tools.

6. Do a so called "in-place upgrade".

This works by migrating the old Windows registry and all the registered devices and their drivers to a new Windows registry. The chances of a successful repair are higher here than doing manual registry labor. It depends largely on the state of the current registry and how badly it is corrupted.

7. Restore your system from a system backup.

If you have one, restoring your system state from a backup could be your first and last step you would need to do to recover from this kind of audio issue. If you don't have a backup solution already, you should invest some time in sourcing a backup solution that can create disk images or system images. I personally have a very good one, but this event with Windows Update and audio issues was set too far back in time for me to revert the changes using my system image, and I didn't attend to the problem at hand before it was too late.

8. Reinstall Windows.

As the last resort, if everything else fails, you can be sure that reinstalling Windows will most certainly resolve the issue. This too could be your first and last step you would need to do. The cost of reinstalling Windows is that you would have to restore all your files and applications. As I pointed out previously, your files should not be stored and living on your Windows partition in any case. Make it a habit to store your files elsewhere. The same goes for applications and configuration files. If you can install them elsewhere, do so. This will make you much better prepared to reinstall Windows whenever you run into some issue that you can't resolve. Reinstalling Windows fixes 99.99% of all issues with Windows.