New
#1
Windows Update Breaks RealTek Audio
I have a recent home-build computer using an ASUS Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 motherboard and AMD FX8350 that replaced a dual Xeon motherboard based home build from 2007 that died. It has a RealTek ALC892 on-board audio chipset and it was great for about a week until Monday, when it died after rebooting for Windows Update. A headset was plugged in, and the RealTek HD Audio Manager, which opens when you plug or unplug something to do with sound, went into a loop where it announced that I had plugged in headphones, then plugged in a microphone, then unplugged headphones, then unplugged microphone, which repeated until I unplugged the headset. The computer now produces no sound.
During boot before the sound drivers are installed, occasional clicks and bumps are barely audible from the speakers. When the audio driver loads, there is a quiet click and they grow silent. Unfortunately, they remain silent, no matter what I do (see below). Right-clicking on the audio icon in the taskbar and selecting "Playback devices" produces a screen that shows the speakers as selected as default, and selecting that enables a pushbutton that produces a screen in which the speakers can be tested. Until Windows Update broke the RealTek audio, the test sounds came through the speakers or headphones. Now, only silence. The bar graph of audio output shows that the software is producing the waveforms but they are not coming out the audio jacks anymore. The Windows "Troubleshoot Audio Playback" utility finds no problems. Things that I have done include, but are not limited to, the following:
- I downloaded and installed the latest (November 11, version 6.1.7023) sound drivers from the ASUS web site. These are the same version as were on the motherboard DVD, which I also tried. No joy.
- I deleted the sound drivers and tried the RealTek drivers found by Windows Update. No joy. I later looked at a list on the WU web site and found that the latest RealTek sound drivers in the WU database are from 2009. I put back the ones from the ASUS web site. Still no joy.
- I run the Windows 7 Installation DVD under the "Upgrade" option and re-installed Windows 7. During this process, I was notified that "Windows has discovered a problem with .NET4.5" which it fixed. No joy.
- I un-installed all audio-related drivers and installed the downloaded ASUS drivers.
There seems to be no smoking gun in the System Information Hardware Resources Conflicts/Sharing list. I did a search on "audio" in System Information and turned up this repeatedly in the Windows Error Reporting:
12/11/2013 4:41 PM Windows Error Reporting Fault bucket , type 0
Event Name: ScriptedDiagFailure
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0

Problem signature:
P1: Microsoft Corporation.AudioRecordingDiagnostic.1.0
P2: RC_NotDefault/DefaultInstanceId
P3: 1.0.0.0
P4: Default
P5: 
P6: 
P7: 
P8: 
P9: 
P10: 

Attached files:
C:\Users\JamesKBeard\AppData\Local\Temp\msdtadmin\_0C500D26-3AE3-40EA-9F87-DC6991E4937D_\PkgB9AE.cab

These files may be available here:
C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportQueue\NonCritical_Microsoft Corpor_b68f98d6390a610b86fe2cb0d2cc2617ecc_cab_1592bad7

Analysis symbol: 
Rechecking for solution: 0
Report Id: 2255f412-6283-11e3-81ad-ac220b50c54d
Report Status: 4
A look at all the Report.wer files showed that these were from attempts to run the troubleshooter for audio playback.
My workaround has been to order a sound card (ASUS Xonar DGX PCIe 1x, using the C-Media CMI8786 chipset, so I can plug in the front panel connector in case this problem is there for the long haul.
I have two questions:
- I did a web search and find that Windows Update has been breaking RealTek audio regularly since at least 2006. Is this happening a lot lately with a Windows Update and the RealTek ALC892 chipset? Is there a fix or workaround?
- It's clear that either I have a software conflict with the RealTek audio drivers or the current build of Windows 7 Ultimate has a software conflict with RealTek audio drivers. Does Windows 8.1 work with the current build and RealTek ALC892 chipset?
- I have zero interest in touch-screen or tablet BS and have no plans to move to Windows 8. I have vast amounts of software, some of which is "mission critical" including Absoft Pro Fortran, Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop and DreamWeaver, Microsoft Office 2007, Acronis, SyncCell, Diskeeper 12, Nero 2014, Stardock ObjectDock, an HP9180 on an Eithernet switch, etc. Will Windows 8.1 break or impede the use of any of this?