HOW I FIXED MY WINDOWS 10 SOUND
I recently had a hard drive (HDD) fail on my desktop. Not unexpected since the desktop was from 2013 but still a useful desktop that performed well up to the failure. I decided to put a solid state drive (SSD) in the desktop which will greatly improve the performance of any computer. I also added a traditional HDD for the pictures, music, videos, etc.
Installation of the new drives was a breeze. The desktop has a lot of room to move in there so after the case was buttoned-up I started the Windows 10 re-install. Again, no surprises here, just time consuming updating all of the Windows 10 patches.
This is where things threw me for a loop. While waiting on patches to download and install I tried to watch a video online. The video played fine but had no sound. I tried another video to make sure it wasn’t due to the video I was watching but the no-sound issue stayed the same. In fact, even Windows sounds couldn’t be heard.
I checked to make sure everything was plugged into the right places and even tested the speakers without using the computer which worked fine. It was when I started looking into some additional troubleshooting steps that I found that my problem could be related to a recent Windows 10 patch. The patch in question was causing sound issues on some Windows 10 systems. I followed some of the troubleshooting guides to no avail. One of the easier step-by-step guides I came across was from GuidingTech which you can also find here: https://www.guidingtech.com/no-sound-issue-windows-10-update/
So my situation was complicated by the fact that this was a fresh install due to the old hard drive failing. The ‘ROLL BACK DRIVER’ steps should have fixed my issue but I had no drivers to roll back to. Next I set out to find the sound drivers directly from the manufacture.
Did I mention my system was a bit dated? (2013 if you remember.) Because I didn’t want to unplug everything from the computer and open it up again I found the info from the system back from 2013. Gmail search works very well. That lead me to the specific motherboard which allowed me to look up the maker of the sound chip on the board. A search later I was downloading the sound drivers from the chip maker themselves.
From there it was a driver update and sound device selection and there we go, sound restored. It just goes to show how working with computers goes some times. Things you don’t expect can send you down an hour-long rabbit-hole.
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