No sound from rear audio jacks after installing W7

BarraCuda93 · 30 Mar 2014

Hi there, first of all nice job on this forum, as it seems this one is one of the most active for windows 7 help. I hope you guys can help me out.
My problems began after I clean re-installed W7. My rear audio jacks are not being recognised in device manager, and plugging in my headphones won't help. I disabled my front audio panels, because the front and rear jacks cant be used at the same time and my rear jacks have surround sound options, so I'm using those.
This setup has been working fine for 4 years, with me using the rear jacks for my 5.1 surround sound headset.

Specs:
- Windows 7 Ultimate x64
- ASRock P55M PRO motherboard ASRock > P55M Pro
According to ASRock: Audio - 7.1 CH HD Audio (VIA® VT1708S Audio Codec)

What I've tried to do / done already:
- Checked volume, sound ON/OFF and all that basic stuff
- Looked at Device Manager, see screenshot.
- Updated windows with windows updater
- Checked my headphones, they still work on other devices
- I enabled the on board sound in BIOS (maybe I did it wrong?)
- Downloaded the drivers from the asrock website, however, after using the setup.exe for the driver and restarting my computer, it's as if nothing changed.
- Did the same for the drivers from the VIA website.
NOTE sometimes after restarting after setting up a driver I get a black screen prior to logging onto my desktop saying: 'General Serial ATA Driver diskette (Y/N)?', saying NO will restart the pc, and then into the black screen with the question again, YES will say that it's not possible and restart all over again.

Screenshots
See how there's only 2 devices listed, where there I guess should be 6 jacks listed as well. This doesnt change when plugging in my headphones.

No sound from rear audio jacks after installing W7-noaudio.png

The fact that nothing shows up in my device manager and audio device manager is something I haven't seen yet when googling my problems.

Also the fact that the downloaded drivers don't seem to work bothers me, maybe I'm using them wrong? I usually extract them from .zip files and then run setup.exe
I hope you guys may know what I can do next. I will check this thread as often as I can to provide more information if necessary.

matts6887 · 30 Mar 2014

Sounds like something is amiss with the device itself or possibly the jacks themselves(possible hardware issue). But; i would try completely uninstalling all the devices that have the issues; reboot; and let windows try and reinstall them. If you have disks for any of the devices you might have to use the disc to load the drivers and then update them online if needed. If that does not work then it sounds like those jacks may have just bit the dust suddenly in which case you could try sending the board in to the manufacturer to have them fix it; or just get a new board which i know is not what you want to hear but if it comes down to that you may have to.

BarraCuda93 · 30 Mar 2014

Ah ok interesting, but I already tried uninstalling the drivers from the listed audio devices and rebooted: it didn't work.
However, those devices (S/PDIF and HDMI) aren't part of the audio device that is causing problems.
I think the main problem is that somehow the sound card/chip that is built in my motherboard doesn't show up in the sound device panel.

As for the jacks, even if they would be broken, wouldn't the sound system be popping up in the devices /sound devices panel? Also note that I used the jacks for 4 years every day before they stopped after installing windows the next day

telfordpeter · 01 Apr 2014

I purchased an external Creative USB Sound Card ( for a similar problem) and now I have sound !

stormy13 · 01 Apr 2014

You need to install the audio driver from the link you posted. That it is showing as "high definition audio device" says the it is using the default Windows driver (which provides just enough functionality to get sound), and not the proper driver (Via according to the specs for that motherboard).

BarraCuda93 · 05 Apr 2014

Stormy, I did that, but it didn't change anything. When I open the driver I get an UAC pop-up, but then nothing happens. What bothers me is that the jacks don't show up in the sound device manager, as if they don't exist. Even after plugging in my headphones, nothing shows up and I don't get any sound

Gator · 05 Apr 2014

If you tried drivers on website, the drivers from your motherboard disk, and you have made sure it isn't the your hardware (use multiple headphones/speakers and test speakers/headphones on known working PC), then the next logical step is to maybe consider that your audio jacks could be dead.

I'd say the driver is the most likely at fault.