How can I disable Windows from detecting my HD6870 as a sound device?

First, I would like to say hi. Lovely forum, lovely theme, and pretty pleasing on the eyes.

Second, I lol'd when I read

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My problem is, pretty much, the mouthy thread title. I recently got rid of my Audigy SE soundcard (poor driver support, mediocre soundcard, etc) and am using my motherboard's onboard. It's functioning perfectly, all set up and everything, but everytime I reboot my computer, it (my motherboard) will (as my motherboard's BIOS tells it to, I cannot change this) disable the onboard sound device completely and only detect my graphics card as a sound device.

I uninstalled the AMD Audio drivers through Catalyst but Windows 7, being rather clever, picks my graphics card up as a sound device anyway. To fix the problem I either simply restart my computer again (what's the point of an SSD if you have to reboot twice anyway?) and have a 80% chance that my onboard is detected again or I go into device manager, uninstall device, and the next boot up is fine. I tried using a group policy but Windows 7 still managed to sneak around.

The problem is, of course, that after the next boot it will install itself and so the vicious cycle continues. I tried google but none of it seemed to apply to me.

TL;DR noob summery:
how 2 disable win7 auto installing devices???

Relevant specs:

Gigabyte X48-DQ6 (Latest BIOS, Realtek ALC889A codec) - The source of the problem really, in the BIOS the bit about the Azalia codec only mentions "Auto" or "Disabled". Auto means it will enable itself if no other sound devices were detected and disabled means...well...you know.

XFX HD6870 etc, using Cat.12.6.

Windows 7 Pro 64bit

Hello,

The only way I know of disabling the video card's audio portion is by going into Device Manager and setting it as disabled.

This happened to me when I found out that displayPort sends audio and video ala HDMI over the same wire on my HTPC.

So, right-click 'Computer' in the 'Start' menu, click 'Manage', then go into 'Device Manager' on the left and drill down to the 'Sound, video and game controllers' option on the right. Expand it by clicking the '+', then right-click the audio device you want to disable and click 'Disable'.

I would reboot the computer and test things out to make sure the video side is still working.

Should have mentioned I tried that before.

Bump, more annoying than ever nowadays. Have to restart 4-5 times before I get lucky and it picks up my onboard soud before it thinks my gfx card is the sound device to use.

Would be swell if I could just have Windows completely ignore the audio aspect of the gfx card. Tried everything I could find on google but no luck.

Problem is that my motherboard will completely ignore the fact that it has onboard sound because it thinks my GFX card is the sound card. I've uninstalled the GFX card's audio drivers, disabled the device, uninstalled the device in device manager, and even tried a few group policy settings but non works.

If I could just get Windows 7 to completely disregard and not install my GFX card's audio aspects it would be swell.

Aray said:

Problem is that my motherboard will completely ignore the fact that it has onboard sound because it thinks my GFX card is the sound card. I've uninstalled the GFX card's audio drivers, disabled the device, uninstalled the device in device manager, and even tried a few group policy settings but non works.

If I could just get Windows 7 to completely disregard and not install my GFX card's audio aspects it would be swell.

First of all, to disable automatic installation of drivers by windows - have a look here.

Secondly, have you tried moving the videocard to another PCI/PCIe slot on the motherboard?
Might be the port is somewhat damaged causing the conflicting discovery of it being sound the one time, videocard the next.

Ziggieke said:

Aray said:

Problem is that my motherboard will completely ignore the fact that it has onboard sound because it thinks my GFX card is the sound card. I've uninstalled the GFX card's audio drivers, disabled the device, uninstalled the device in device manager, and even tried a few group policy settings but non works.

If I could just get Windows 7 to completely disregard and not install my GFX card's audio aspects it would be swell.

First of all, to disable automatic installation of drivers by windows - have a look here.

Secondly, have you tried moving the videocard to another PCI/PCIe slot on the motherboard?
Might be the port is somewhat damaged causing the conflicting discovery of it being sound the one time, videocard the next.

I'll check it out. It's not really damage so much as the motherboard doing what it's told when booting (if it detects another sound device, which is the GFX card, it is to completely disable the onboard sound).

edit- erm, already tried that first bit. >_<

Maguscreed said:

As long as you use the hdmi I think you are stuck with it, you can simply disable it in playback devices and the system will use the next audio device in line. I actually jump between my hdmi audio and system audio all the time. Just by toggling them from there.

I'm not using HDMI, only DVI.