If sound goes strange, or stops working, in Windows 10, and you are willing to try just about anything to fix it, you can try the instructions below. Please note. These instructions do not fix all Windows 10 sound problems. Also note. These instructions could result in you having to do a clean reinstall of Windows 10 on your computer.
It is with the understanding that these instructions are risky, and not guaranteed to work, that I provide them here.
Step 1 : Press the Windows key, hold it down, and press the I key to bring up the Settings Window, as illustrated here:
Step 2 : Click on the Apps button to bring up the Apps & features Window, as illustrated here:
Step 3 : Find the Sound Application and Drivers. This is usually named similarly to:
Realtek Audio Driver
Realtek High Definition Audio Driver
Conexant Audio Driver
When you have located the sound application, click on it. It will display the version of the application, and options to Modify or Uninstall the application, similar to the following:
Step 4 : Uninstall the Sound application. Click on the Uninstall button, and do what it says. When it has completed the uninstall process, restart you computer by holding down the Windows key, and pressing the X key, then letting go of the Windows key, and pressing the U key, then the R key. Count to 1 between pressing keys to be safe.
NOTE: If there is no sound package available, you can skip this step.
Step 5 : After the computer has rebooted, and is usable again, hold down the Windows key, and press the X key, then let go of both keys, and press the M key. This brings up the Device Manager window, as illustrated below.
Step 6 : Click on the Sound devices item in the Device Manager window to display a list of sound devices on your computer, similar to the following.
Step 7 : Right click on the sound device (In this case, Realtek High Definition Audio, but for your computer it may be Realtek Audio, or Conexant Audio, or something similar) to bring up a menu of options for actions to take, as illustrated here.
Step 8 : Select the Uninstall device option. This will display an Uninstall Device window similar to the following.
If the Uninstall Device window has a checkbox that reads Delete the driver software for this device, check the box, and press the Uninstall button, similar to the following.
Step 9 : Restart the computer. At this point, Windows 10 will install a default sound driver for the sound system of your computer. It may make you wait a bit while it reboots, and it may boot to the Windows Recovery Environment. If it boots to the Recovery Environment, restart the computer again.
Sound on your computer should work at this point. If you are happy with sound as it works at this point, you’re done, sound is working, and you don’t have the problems you did earlier.
If you want to use the sound application from the computer manufacturer, you can download that application from the manufacturer (such as Hewlett Packard, Lenovo, ASUS, Samsung, or Dell), and then install that application using the instructions provided by the manufacturer.
What this process does is uninstall the sound system on your computer, force the computer to reload the sound system when it starts up, thus resetting all the sound settings in the Windows registry, and forcing Windows to use a known good sound driver.
If this works for you, good.
If your computer blows up when you do this, remember, I did warn you it could do so before you tried this.
Mark.
My Soul's Tears 