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[Thrillho]

Hello all!

A quick search of the forum gave me no joy in finding some kind of tech support thread. I thought we had one but if do I don't know what it's called!

Recent updates to Windows 10 have left my laptop thinking it has no speakers or microphone. I can plug my USB mic in, and it can see that, and I can input and receive output through that, but otherwise it just thinks it has no sound.

I've tried multiple methods from Googling this. Can anybody suggest anything that has worked for them? Windows' own Wizard keeps claiming to have installed new updates and need to reboot, and then nothing changes.

(click to show/hide)

I also just want to rant in passing that I am incredulous about the fact that a product as widely used as Windows can get away with it just being 'a thing' that happens sometimes that it rolls out a new updates and some users just lose all of their sound. This is something that has happened in multiple updates before. How is it still happening? How is this not something that immediately needs addressing in a matter of hours with a patch?)

Fellow mods if it turns out I missed a painfully obvious thread this could have gone in please do merge.

[LeeC]

I'm still on windows 8, but I used to do tech support. Sometimes updates (of the windows variety) can screw up drivers. I would go into your device manager and verify that it recognizes the drivers for your speakers and microphones. Sometimes there will be a "?" next to a device indicating that it doesn't recognize it. You can usually click on it and ask it to search for drivers and it will install them.

Hope this helps. I know this sort of thing can be frustrating.

[LeeC]

Also I found this, it may help if my suggestion didn't work. Looks like it was posted on Nov 5th 2020 so it should be recent enough information.

https://www.drivereasy.com/knowledge/fix-windows-10-upgrade-issue-internal-microphone-not-working/

[hedgie]

You also have to remember that Windows is designed to basically run on anything from top tier hardware bits hand-picked to work together perfectly, to whatever crap is thrown into a box, to some combination that would even give Cthulhu nightmares.  Quite honestly, I'm impressed that it works at all.

Linux users tend to look at manufacturers that are well-supported by their distro, because there's no expectation of that.

And of course, MacOS tends to be extremely well-optimised and "just works" because there is such limited hardware to support, and Apple controls that too.

[Tova]

If you are stuck, you could remove the update to get your laptop back to a working state, at least for the time being.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/recovery-options-in-windows-10-31ce2444-7de3-818c-d626-e3b5a3024da5#bkmk_section1

I would be looking into any forum or support options for your specific laptop model because I imagine you're not the only one who has struck this problem.

Also, did you try turning it off and on again? (yeah I know, but it's the routine thing to ask because it's successful alarmingly often)

[Cornelius]

Last time I had this kind of issue, removing the update, and waiting for the next did help.

[hedgie]

Aah, so Windows does snapshots now.  Good to know.

[cybersmurf]

You could check whether the audio device has been deactivated, needs a driver update, or has been set to HDMI audio output (typically more of a desktop problem than laptop).

Aah, so Windows does snapshots now.  Good to know.

Windows has had Restore Points since, like, forever now, but ("easily") uninstallable updates / rollbacks since ... at least Windows 7?

The audio portion is screwy as hell for me. I use a Creative sound card, an like every other major update I have to change my default audio device. My guess is: integrated audio / HDMI audio usually works by default on Windows, and therefore my sound card only gets found after the successful update. And it's annyoing having to find out what's wrong and remembering you just did one of the biannual updates.

[hedgie]

I've had similar "fun" with Nvidia drivers on rolling Linux releases.  At least a couple of times, I'd have to roll back to a previous snapshot and wait a month or so for the proprietary driver to catch up with the kernel version.  Oddly enough, my Soundblaster card always worked out of the box.

[Thrillho]

So according to the settings I can find on my laptop, I do not have any audio device or any microphone.

Except if I go to system settings, where it claims I have the most up-to-date drivers.

Guess I'll go and try to roll back the Windows update.

[pwhodges]

I'd go first to the laptop manufacturer's support website, find and download their drivers for the devices in your model, and try those.  It may be that the mere act of reinstalling them fixes things.

My own audio interface has drivers about 10 years old, which is when the manufacturer (Creative) withdrew from the professional market (their E-MU subsidiary).  They now only work if patched by replacing one file with the equivalent from another later SoundBlaster driver - and I have to do a full reinstall and patch for each major Windows upgrade.  It's a pain, but I'd have to spend well over £1000 to get the same functionality with as good quality.

[Wingy]

This is why I buy drives in 3s.  I make an image backup before I allow any Msoft updates of any kind, and have had to reimage more than once after updates proved too unstable.  I rotate my backups among the two drives not installed and make sure I've got a backup of C not only on rotating rust in the machine, but also on both backup drives at all times.  Learned my lesson on that after being bit by a particularly nasty virus on WinXP that took a week to partially uninstall enough that I could get my restore tool to work...

[hedgie]

I've gotten pretty complacent with that.  I have Time Machine for everything, and then use Tresorit for remote storage of Everything Important.  Hopefully, soon enough, I'll have the money to put a pi and a large HDD in a colo running Nextcloud as well.

[Thrillho]

Great recommendation from Paul, there.

Ran the diagnostic through the website for the manufacturer, and it has detected a hardware problem with both microphone and speakers 

The battery in this thing crapped out a while ago, and I have been running it plugged it as it won't stay on otherwise. I guess it's starting to just crap out piece by piece.

[cybersmurf]

Sorry to hear it's starting to fail beyond battery issues. You still could try going back, sometimes Windows issues may appear as hardware issues (like the diagnostic tool not seeing speakers and mic in the windows device list, marking it down as hardware issue), as software might not get far enough through the HAL (no, not 2001's HAL, but the Hardware Abstraction Layer) to detect actual hardware issues. You might even want to try and turn off the audio chip in BIOS/UEFI, boot windows, and then turn it on again in the BIOS/UEFI. Sometimes that can help too (it's like remove it and plug it in again).

I've only replaced one PC - well mainboard, but often that's considered the core - due to failing from age. One laptop had its GPU die from thermal issues, another laptop i replaced with the end of Windows XP and the lack of power for 7, and then I destroyed a mainboard by being stupid and re-settling the heat sink in a not good way.

[hedgie]

I've had an SSD fail, a CPU die to heat issues, and a backup HDD die from a fall.  My first laptop was still running at 11 years old last time I heard (it's now on to its 2nd person that couldn't otherwise afford a machine).  Linux, of course, that thing could barely run Windows when I got it.  My first Mac did have a PSU die, and years later, the PCI SCSI controller that I had put in failed (thankfully, I had a friend with a spare SCSI card).  But most computing issues I've had were self-inflicted.

[Gyrre]

Honestly, I'm getting tired of opening the Task Manager upon startup and sniping the M$ crap I don't want running as it pops up. Feels a bit like whack-a-mole with some of them because I have to 'end task' them w/i microseconds of appearing to actually stop them.

I should probably just switch to Linux at this point.

[hedgie]

What’s your use case?

[Jimor]

If you search "Privacy Settings" to get to the system settings for this, then scroll down the left panel to find "background apps", you'll find a list of around 40 MS and other apps that run in the background listening for potential calls from other software. NONE of these need to be running in the background for them to work properly if they get called by other means (such as being the default program for an extension).

Turning them off has demonstrably helped several streamers, including myself, have smoother running computers under the kinds of load playing games while also streaming on the same box can cause. What's frustrating is that none of these is listed as Start Options in Task Manager, so you have to know about this obscure location in system settings to keep them all from loading on startup.

I know in particular Photos was one I'd kill in Task Manager before I knew about this to make the most difference in performance.

[Tova]

Honestly, I'm getting tired of opening the Task Manager upon startup and sniping the M$ crap I don't want running as it pops up. Feels a bit like whack-a-mole with some of them because I have to 'end task' them w/i microseconds of appearing to actually stop them.

Stop playing whack-a-mole. You may find this tool helpful.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/autoruns