After the update, Windows 11 has no sound and the audio isn't working

I absolutely hate Windows 11 (the only Windows I was happy with were XP and 7; all others are just piece of garbage); for a while I had the 'audio renderer problem' every week; then the last week one morning I just could not access Internet - no page would open in either Chrome or Firefox, and I could not ping even Google from the command prompt - I wasted time on calling Fidium and router people - because the problem was not in them and not in my computer hardware but in the operating system that works against users and not to the consumer/customer benefit; i had to do 'network reset' suddenly to make it work - why? - it worked fine as it was for months before that: you did something behind customers backs to cause that. And today I have no audio: "no audio devices installed" - but that is a lie: audio devices are installed, and they worked just fine as of yesterday, and I did not make any changes to my setup - no, it is again YOU - Windows decided to capriciously block my computer's access to audio - and now I have to spend hours and hours looking through the support files and fiddling with settings to find out what is wrong - all without a shred of support from you; when I went through Device Manager and searched for drivers I got a list long 119 pages - I don't have time for this, I am not paid for this - some entries turned back the message: "Failed to add driver to the system. Error 0xE000022F: The third-party INF does not contain digital signature information." - I don't even know what else doesn't work besides audio right now, or what exactly to look for. But let me tell you what I want: I want seamless access to Internet, email, browsers, I want my speakers, my microphone, my camera to work instantly, without any permissions or requests, I want my scanner and my printer to work on demand without any fiddling, I want my USB sticks to be read and accessed when I plug them in, I want my bluetooth devices to connect instantly - I don't want and I don't need most of the features you now offer to "protect" me and my data at cost of my peripheral devices not working properly because your software is blocking them - I don't need 365, OneDrive, Azure, InTune, etc. - i just need a dumb operating system that sits quietly on my desktop and makes sure my peripherals work on demand and my internet is fast and reliable so I can get my work done and enjoy my old age in peace, and not have to find out what again is wrong and why every week; I asked my son to install Linux on my desktop as soon as he can, and I can't wait to say good riddance to Microsoft spyware; on top of that I plan on writing to the FCC and FTC about this experience, and to my congressional delegation (Sanders, Welch, Balint); I am also going to insist to my local political representatives to make the State of Vermont stop using Microsoft 365 secure messaging (also a total disaster) - we, the citizens of Vermont should not feed such an evil company with our data

Try this:

Open Device Manager, and make sure you've audio drivers installed and properly working.

If no audio driver is listed, you can visit your device manufacturer's website to download and install audio drivers for your system model.

If audio driver is present, you can try updating audio drivers to latest version.

Or if you've already updated them, try to roll back previous version to see if that works.

Also, run Playing Audio troubleshooter from Settings app > System > Troubleshoot > Other troubleshooters. Let us know what it reports back.

This is a known issue with recent Windows 11 updates, particularly version 24H2, where a one-time driver installation error can cause audio to stop working entirely. The good news is that it's almost always fixable.

Windows Update sometimes pushes a generic or corrupted audio driver that doesn't play nice with your laptop's actual hardware. The fix usually involves either rolling back that driver or reinstalling the correct one from your laptop manufacturer.

Please download and install the latest audio driver.