Realtek Audio Static with Acer m5100 Windows 7 Install

Hello all.

I am posting here on behalf of my uncle, a man who is not tech savvy and in need of assistance.

He has received from his older brother an Acer Aspire m5100 PC, which the brother himself got from a neighbor who was going to toss it out. The PC initially came with Windows 8 installed. My uncle like many users was completely disoriented by the Metro UI of Windows 8, so we set him up yesterday with a Windows 7 Home Premium x64 installation. The OS itself works fine, but we are having serious audio issues.

Any system sounds, online video, and local audio simply does not play on the machine. Instead, a deafening popping and crackling static can be heard.

To try to alleviate the issue I have of course searched through these and many other forums and databases. So far I have tried using the last official driver release on the Acer support page for this model in Vista compatibility mode. I have also tried the most recent Realtek drivers, 2.71 or whatever the number is at the top of this forum. Neither driver has given any improvement.

Here are the specifications of the PC as given by Acer. All of the other components besides the OS have been untouched.
Acer Support: Aspire M5100 Specifications

I might also add that I tried booting an Ubuntu install through a USB drive on the front of the machine. I was able to hear the audio perfectly fine through that method, so I am assuming the problem isn't necessarily one of the hardware or any interference. If that is incorrect please let me know.

Thanks for any help that you might be able to provide. I will probably not be around when you respond to this post, but I may be able to check in throughout the week to give some progress from any suggestions. I will also be spending the weekend here so that may be prime time to communicate and reach me. Thank you again for your time.

Yes, sorry. I did install the drive both through the device manager as well as the Realtek website.

I am unaware as to whether or not the sound worked in Windows 8. No speakers were hooked up to the machine while we had it with the Windows 8 install.

In device manager the device is listed as "Realtek High Definition Audio."

Event viewer shows multiple errors but none of which I can tell are directly related to the problem. One of them stems from the Marvell Yukon Ethernet device, which I have updated drivers for. There are some from the Kernel that mention power failure; I have reason to believe that one of the RAM cards may be faulty. I ran a memtest86 boot through that same linux disk and saw a few errors on the first pass. They did not repeat. I don't understand how the memory error could necessarily lead to a lack of sound in Windows though. And like I said, audio is operational in an Ubuntu boot.