SOLVED

Reinstate audio function without reinstalling Windows?

Brass Contributor

Hello experts,

 

I have the following problem in Windows 10.

 

Windows says: "No Audio Output Device is installed."

Windows says: Speakers (High Definition Audio Device): "This device is working properly."

 

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Can you guess what the problem is? Your guess is as good as mine. I have had this problem since April, after receiving an update. Microsoft knows all about it, I made sure to report all my findings back to the Feedback Hub. (I believe that update has been pushed back or withdrawn since.)

 

There are a number of things I have tried already to solve this, including the usual uninstall and reinstall of drivers, command line operations and doing in-place upgrade, none of which worked. The only thing that did work at one point, was using System Restore point (no pun intended). But that restore point was purged from the system apparently, during my troubleshooting and Windows Update's tendency to revert back all my changes because it kept installing that same updated over and over again, which not only caused me to lose audio but also caused my system to get stuck in a GSOD loop.

 

The only viable option I now have is to do a complete system reinstall to get the sound working again. Or! To purchase an external audio card and reroute the audio that way. I'm currently using the "SupremeFX" (Realtek for ASUS) chip that's built into the board.

 

But I'm curious to see what you experts would suggest? Is there a way to reinstate the audio function in Windows without reinstalling the entire system? I'm sick and tired of reinstalling Windows every time I run into more of a serious issue. Trivial issues are easily dealt with without reinstalling Windows, but not something like this I'm afraid. I'm still hopeful that there might be something I have overlooked, because I can't really afford to reinstall my system at the moment and I would rather not go out and purchase an external audio card to work around what is essentially a software problem in Windows.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

57 Replies

No worries, I understand. You can follow along if you like.

 

I have now downloaded the latest audio drivers from ASUS from 12 May 2021 (6.0.9088.1):

https://rog.asus.com/motherboards/rog-strix/rog-strix-z370-f-gaming-model/helpdesk_download

 

I have installed them and rebooted, and discovered that I now have a device with a question that will not go away when I reboot (appeared after installing the drivers and before rebooting). Also, I have some old (hidden) devices with the wrong name like "High Definition Audio Device" and new devices like "Realtek(R) Audio".

 

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Still not working. I have uninstalled the "High Definition Audio Device".

 

The questionable device properties look like this:

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Note that its "location" is on "Realtek(R) Audio".

I have uninstalled the "High Definition Audio Device".

 

The unknown device was "Sonic Studio Virtual Mixer" (or so it seems). I have installed its driver by manually pointing to the "V9088_V5_WHQL_210428_SS_III_VAD" folder where I unpacked the driver package from ASUS (Windows Update failed to find a matching driver).

 

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I still have no sound. Maybe a reboot is required at this point...

Nope, I still have no sound. But at least everything appears normal now.

 

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I have now uninstalled and disabled all audio devices and finished a second in-place upgraded to build 21354 on Windows Insider Dev channel (using Windows10_InsiderPreview_Client_x64_en-us_21354.iso) and then re-enabled them and even done a another driver reinstall. I still don't have a working audio. (I have also updated to the latest build 21390 on Dev channel as you can see in the screenshot.)

 

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I'm afraid not even God can help this situation (he's probably not running Windows).

Someone wake me up when the Windows audio stack can be reinstalled and reconfigured from the ground up, without reinstalling the entire system, and when Windows is no longer using Registry for its hardware configurations.

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@SamirGunic 

I question whether you turned off the controller in > Task Manager and Device Manager?> restart.> in this protocol turn on the controller again
How it does not work is because you have > good driver.> restart the Sound System Repair tool and carefully analyze the steps in this I see
possibility of repair - I think you are making a mistake - it is best to use the service for this brand of computers


Another thing is to check the properties of Realtek (R) to see if inheritance is enabled for all users?
It's really hard to come up with a solution at a distance

What do you mean by turning off the controller in Task Manager? It's in Device Manager.

By Sound System Repair tool do you mean the troubleshooter?

I don't know what you mean by "service" and "brand of computers". Are you referring to Asus? I don't have an Asus computer. I have an Asus motherboard, the computer is built by me.

Where do I set this inheritance? There is nothing to set in the properties box in Device Manager. Do you mean Regedit?
I meant and the manufacturer of the whole device, but in this case it was complicated, but it seems most appropriate to go to the site to review your settings, or install a new sound card
I wrote of course about troubleshooter really made me using the sound of this tool helped me only need to choose the right steps when repairing by the tool. Sorry translations are not precise

@SamirGunic 

 

Please change this setting to default!

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To go to what site and review what settings?

 

I see you're showing me a screenshot of your audio controller properties in Device Manager. The two highlighted buttons are (in English) "Roll Back Driver" and "Disable Device". I see you're using a high contrast theme, it's hard for me to tell what is and what isn't highlighted here (the green text or turquoise background).

 

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As you can see here, the "High Definition Audio Device" has jumped back into existence along with "Realtek(R) Audio". This is undesired and unexpected. There is only one such device, not two. I don't know what's going on here. Two different drivers (Microsoft and Asus/Realtek) applied to same device and one device appearing as two separate devices? This looks very bizarre.

I do understand what you're saying here, but I don't understand why I would select the first (default) option. You think it would help the situation somehow? It seems like a gamble to me.

 

When I did this in-place upgrade, I decided against "download updates, drivers and optional features" because I didn't want to sit and wait too long. I had already spent the first half day on this. Also, I had already disabled and uninstalled (as stated previously) all audio devices (including Intel Display Audio) in addition to disabling the integrated audio device in UEFI. It would seem reasonable that Windows could not possibly download and install drivers for devices it has no recognition of, devices that have been permanently shut off in hardware/firmware. I wanted to start off with a clean slate much as possible.

 

Of course, I later enabled the audio device in UEFI, and I allowed Windows Update to go fetch me some updates, drivers and whatnot. As a matter of fact, I am now running the latest Windows 10 publicly available, because I allowed Windows Update to go online and install the latest build on the Dev Windows Insider branch (21390.2025). It did not help resolve my situation (expected).

 

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I'm pretty sure I know now what I would need to do if such situation would appear again. I would need to use "Last Known Good Configuration" (LKGC) to restore Windows SYSTEM hive to its previous control set.

 

https://neosmart.net/wiki/last-known-good-configuration/

 

https://neosmart.net/wiki/booting-into-last-known-good-configuration/

 

Sadly, this is only possible immediately after booting up the system. So the error needs to be caught early on. Also, it appears as if no more than one control set is stored by default (ControlSet001), so there are no additional sets to restore to.

 

Is it true that Windows does not possess the capability to rebuild the SYSTEM hive? Without reinstalling the entire operating system? It would seem like a simple requirement, given that the SYSTEM hive is used to store global configuration settings for the hardware. There should not be a lot of dependencies as this is the widest scope possible, and computer hardware itself seldomly changes.

 

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Alternatively, a system restore point can be used, if available. I used to be able to repair this problem this way, not once, but several times. For each time Windows Update destroyed my audio by pushing in KB5001391. Up until that restore point was purged from the system and I no longer had any such restore point to fall back on (and now I'm here without a resolution).

I'll ask if you have prepared a system recovery drive in advance then it would be easiest!
Or the system repair disk is done at the beginning of use, and then it is forgotten

To be honest I'm not too familiar with these Microsoft terms. It's not easy when there are so many "recovery" tools in the Windows world that it's hard to tell them apart, some of which have been discontinued or deprecated by new tools. New tools and new names. Windows "File History" is another example of a tool that has fallen into oblivion.

 

Looking for "System Repair Disc" brought me to this place:
Control Panel\System and Security\Backup and Restore (Windows 7)

 

I don't have one of these discs and I can't even make a new one, apparently, since I don't have any optical drives in this computer. I was not aware that you can't create these without use of optical media. That's telling how old this is. But it still exists for some reason in Windows 10.

 

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As for "recovery drive", I don't have that either. Isn't that the Windows equivalent of disk imaging backup system? I may be confusing it with something else. I use Acronis True Image for my system backups.

 

Sadly I no longer have the system image versions in True Image that predate the audio device problem. Otherwise I would like to have another look at repairing that SYSTEM hive (from backup).

 

Because, what this "No Audio" issue is, is essentially a Windows Registry corruption, caused by a filesystem error which was inevitable when the computer kept entering the GSOD (green screen of death) loop cycle, triggered by installing KB5001391 (plus some other root cause further down the rabbit hole).

 

What I do have on this computer is a 99 MB "EFI System Partition" and then another 499 MB for which no description is given in Disk Management. It appears to be the recovery partition, when viewed in Diskpart  (as seen below). Then there is a second 555 MB recovery partition at the end for some reason (not sure why there are two of them).

 

 

 Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Reserved 128 MB 17 KB
Partition 2 Recovery 499 MB 129 MB
Partition 3 System 99 MB 628 MB
* Partition 4 Primary 464 GB 727 MB
Partition 5 Recovery 555 MB 465 GB

 

 

It helped me a few times and it's still effective!
I have a strange idea as an experiment: https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9PJ0NKL8MCSJ
If you tried to install such a program as an extension Winows10 .
such an installation creates new paths and must create new accesses - perhaps it will work
or uninstall it.

Thanks! I installed it immediately. Sadly, it did not help. I have not rebooted yet, but I doubt it will do anything for me. The problem is that Windows doesn't know that the audio devices are misconfigured.

 

As for the Play Audio troubleshooter, it can only resolve the most trivial of "issues" with the complexity of an ant, like for example unmuting a muted device, or starting up Windows Audio Endpoint Builder and the Windows Audio service. It can really only fix the simplest of audio issues in Windows (and it always suggests a reboot and lists a reboot itself as an issue).

 

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