Windows 7: New Graphics Card Nvidia Geforce GTX 460 has disabled my sound.

I recently reinstalled windows and replaced my old NVIDEA Geforce 9600GT which finally died with a new Geforce GTX 460. However, when I installed the drivers, it completely disabled my motherboard's onboard Realtek Azalia soundcard, and for the last few days I've had no sound at all. Nothing I've done has fixed the problem, and every time I try to uninstall the drivers for everything relating to my video card, the HDMI audio devices reinstall themselves from no discernible source every single time I boot up like a virus.

I'm about ready to take this pathetic video card back to the shop and demand a refund and get a video card that is not going to screw with my computer like this.

I don't use the single HDMI port on my video card, I use both of my monitors on the DVI ports. I really need some help with figuring out how to get the sound working again through the old audio (output/mic) jacks on the back of the PC to get my speakers and headset working once more.

Before we can properly help you, please tell us what you've tried which hasn't worked.

SOME video cards will install themselves as the "default" playback device. When this happens the sound from your sound card is gone. Usually, this is easily fixed by resetting your "speakers" as the default audio playback device. To see if this is your problem, go to the Control Panel/Hardware and Sound and finally the Sound Panel. In the Playback section, click on the Speaker icon then click on "Set as Default".

Okay, well the first thing I tried was simply installing the latest drivers of my soundcard from my motherboard's driver website, that hasn't worked. The next thing I tried doing was uninstalling the graphics card drivers entirely and then reinstalling without the HD audio driver option and then using my motherboard's soundchip drivers. Then I tried going into the bios and seeing if I could somehow enable the onboard audio sound card, but mine only has the options of 'auto' and 'disabled', and auto doesn't work. The error message 'No Audio Output Device is installed' is there constantly (and this answer's Fireberd's response) there IS no speaker option. There is no options at all whatsoever, the listing for playback and recording devices are completely and utterly empty.

Next I tried reinstalling the HD audio drivers from the NVIDEA CD that came with the graphics card and then 4 'High Definition Audio Device' entries come up in the Sound, Video and Game Controllers menu of Device Manager with 4 corresponding 'Digital Audio (HDMI)' devices in the Sound Playback Devices listing, which say they are 'not plugged in'.

After that, I've skipped over the other suggestions I've seen since they were either so hairbrained it left me wondering whether or not they were actually legitimate ways of dealing with this or seemed so dangerous to system stability that I wouldn't touch them with a ten meter pole.

As it is, I have no further clue what to try. Oh and if I haven't stated it already, I do not use the single HDMI port on my video card, neither of my monitors support HDMI and even if they did, none of them have audio jacks or inbuilt speakers.

It sounds like the onboard audio is being disabled at the BIOS level.

What can happen is that if onboard audio is set to "Auto" in BIOS, this will cause it to turn off the onboard audio whenever it detects that another audio card has been plugged in. If the GTX 460 is detected as an audio card, presumably because of its SPDIF functionality, then as soon as the BIOS sees the video card, it thinks there's an audio card present, and it may disable the onboard sound on the motherboard.

If you're having this problem, it's unlikely you'll be able to fix it through adjusting your Windows settings or drivers - the onboard audio would be disabled long before the Windows boot loader even starts.

You may want to check the Gigabyte website to see if they have an updated BIOS that addresses a fix for this issue. The new version may let you "force" the onboard audio to be enabled.

Of course, flashing a BIOS is serious business. You want to be sure the updated BIOS has the fix you need before considering this course of action.

I've taken a look several times before and it looks like Gigabyte has never specifically updated the I/O system for my particular model of motherboard so flashing it is unfortunately not really possible. =\

Before you do anything, just check the Realtek Audio Manager to see if it has defaulted to Digital Output.

That doesn't work. For whatever reason, the video card is deleting and disabling the Realtek audio manager between when I install it and it prompts me for a reboot and when I startup again.

Azalia Codec should be set to Auto in Bios.
Realtek should be installed from here Realtek
Speaker....Realtek High Definition Audio should be selected.

You don't want to disable the Azalia Codec in the Bios, if using onboard audio.
Check your speaker wire connections.

I've tried all that already, p5bdkw. Something (I assume something to do with this ass of a video card) is disabling the activation of the Realtek audio manager which has been properly installed, therefore there is no Realtek High Definition Audio in the playback devices listing.

As it is, this is quickly starting to look like a case where I simply need to get a refund for this video card. There's no point in having a high end video card if it disables sound entirely because games won't even boot up.