Audio Gone After Updating Graphics Driver

Off-Topic Games, Gaming and Hardware
1

Hello!

I apologize for the long post. I’ve been posting around on a few forums hoping to find some help. I figured I’d try here too!

I’m not super tech savvy, but I can generally follow along instructions to get whatever I need done. So, I will just list out all the steps I took. This ALSO happened to my S.O. who has the same PC as me. We both updated our graphics driver at the same time, and now both of our audio is gone. I’ve been searching all over the internet to try and find out what’s going on, but I’m having no luck.

We both updated our graphics driver because WoW told us we needed to. I simply went to the AMD Drivers page, selected Windows 10 - 64 bit, and used their “Auto-Detect and Install”. It recommended one of the more recent updates, so I clicked on that. It did it’s things and it told me to restart my PC, so I did. The driver hadn’t been updated in over a year according to the date I saw prior to updating.

Now, my Graphics driver is updated, but I have no audio. The little speaker icon in the bottom right has a red X on it, and when I hover over it, it says “No Audio Output Device is installed”. Most websites have me check under Device Manager for Sound, video and game controllers, but that option is not listed anymore. Under System Information, I open Components, and click on Sound Device, and it’s simply blank. In the DirectX Diagnostic Tool, I click on the “Sound Tab”, and it’s also blank. No device is named. Under notes, it says “No sound card was found. If one is expected, you should install a sound driver provided by the hardware manufacturer.”

I looked up my Motherboard Gigabyte Technology Co, Product: GA-78LMT-USB3 R2. On their support page, it shows Realteak HD Audio Driver with a Download button. I clicked on that, but instead of installing anything, it just brings up a bunch of files, and I have no idea what to do with those. So, I just went to the realtek download page and started downloading the Realtek HD Audio Driver (Vista/7/8/8.1/10) 64 bit. It took about 2 hours, and once completed, nothing changed. So, I clicked on the download, and it took me into Realtek High Definition Audio Driver Setup (4.21). Went through the steps and told me to restart. When I came back, nothing changed.

My IT friend told me to open those files I downloaded from the motherboard website that I didn’t know what to do with, and told me to look for a Setup option and run that. So, I did, and it took me through the audio driver setup again, I restarted, and nothing changed.

To also add: my load times in game have increased pretty drastically after updating my Graphics Driver. I hopped on WoW and my load times went from 4-5 seconds, to 10-15 seconds. The audio is the bigger priority, but the load times definitely are a bummer too!

I have no idea what to do. This has affected both of us. I googled for hours trying different things. I don’t know what more information is needed, but I’m happy to provide whatever may help. I don’t know how to post pics (first reddit post), but any help is greatly appreciated!!

GPU: AMD Radeon ™ RX 560 Series
Manufacturer: CyberPowerPC
Processor: AMD FX 9™ - 6300 Six - Core Processor 3.50 GHz
RAM: 16 GB

2

You were in the right place. Download the Realtek drivers from https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-78LMT-USB3-R2-rev-10/support#support-dl-driver-audio

Unzip the file and run Setup. That should fix whatever AMD botched.

3

After I downloaded it it from the realtek website and it didn’t work. So, I went back in my downloads and found the file that I had downloaded from the motherboard website. I didn’t unzip it, but I just opened it and hit the “Setup” option. It sent me through the realtek setup, and it had me restart the pc. Should there of been anything I needed to do after I restarted the PC? Or should it of automatically been fine from that?

4

I’m not sure if keeping it zipped was a good idea, but it should be working after a restart. I would uninstall the graphics driver and reinstall it without any audio boxes checked if you’re still having problems.

5

Thank you for your help. I will try that when I get home!

Any thoughts or ideas as to why my game is loading so much slower now too? The WoW load bar just trickles up. I had just updated my HDD to SSD a month or two ago, and my load times were feeling really good! This morning, I tried loading in to Dalaran, and it took a solid 15 seconds. It was loading this slow last night after I updated the driver too, but I tried again this morning to see if it was any better.

6

If disabling/updating addons doesn’t fix the load times it could be something else with your PC. Very hard to narrow it down.