No Audio After Upgrading To Win 7 x64

Hi all,


Today I upgraded my PC to run on Win 7 64-bit. All went well with one exception, the sound has decided to no longer work. The speakers had been working just fine 30 minutes previously, in my PC's previous life as an XP machine.


Anyway, once I had upgraded to W7 x64, initially the speaker icon in my traybar had a red cross next to it. The associated tooltip was "No speakers or headphones are plugged in". I performed an AIDA32 diagnostic on my system, and found the following totally useless description for the Audio Adapter "High Definition Audio Controller [NoDB]" - which made it pretty difficult for me to track down a driver from a particular manufacturer.

After having attempted to update the drivers via the normal channels, I did some googling and found an answer pointing to some generic AC97 drivers from Realtek. Further research showed that this was a common "generic" answer, and one that people "swore black and blue" was the solution. So I downloaded and installed this file.


When I did this, and restarted my machine, the red cross had disappeared from the speaker icon in my traybar. Furthermore, there was an additional traybar icon - a red speaker for the Realtek HD Audio Manager control panel. As well as all of this, there was an additional entry in the Device Manager under Sound, Video and Game Controllers called "Realtek High Definition Audio". The properties of this entry showed me that "This device is working properly".


So, I tested this by playing some music in the Windows Media Player. Stone Silence ... but clicking on the speaker icon in the traybar showed me that the volume meter was moving. So, while my PC is making all these claims that all is well with the speakers, and that the volume is just fine - its not, its all BS.


I tried everything I could think of to make this work. I double and triple checked the connections between the speakers and my PC. I also went into the Realtek HD Audio Manager and tested L and R speakers, and different settings and presets. All to no avail.


Any help appreciated .... the stubborn refusal of my PC's audio to play ball is starting to sh*t me to tears !


regards,
Andrew

it would be helpful if you filled in your system specs. i assume you have a fairly new machine if it runs win7 x64. if so, try downloading the latest driver from the realtek website (if you are certain you have realtek audio). the ac'97 driver is probably not the one you need.
go here and click the link on the right that says "HD Audio Codec Driver". again,that is assuming you have realtek audio.

http://www.realtek.com/

No, its not all that new. I did however use Microsoft's Upgrade Advisor before upgrading to make sure.
My specs are Intel Pentium 4 3GHz Acer desktop, with 4GB RAM.

I've already been to the Realtek website that you quoted, and it got me nowhere. I'm not certain that its realtek audio - as I said when I benchmarked my system using AIDA, it gave me a very generic description of the audio adapter. As I also said, the reason why I went to Realtek was because numerous forum contributions around the web said that the generic Realtek AC97 driver would work.

what model is your acer desktop?

mathman said:

Hi all,


Today I upgraded my PC to run on Win 7 64-bit. All went well with one exception, the sound has decided to no longer work. The speakers had been working just fine 30 minutes previously, in my PC's previous life as an XP machine.


Anyway, once I had upgraded to W7 x64, initially the speaker icon in my traybar had a red cross next to it. The associated tooltip was "No speakers or headphones are plugged in". I performed an AIDA32 diagnostic on my system, and found the following totally useless description for the Audio Adapter "High Definition Audio Controller [NoDB]" - which made it pretty difficult for me to track down a driver from a particular manufacturer.

After having attempted to update the drivers via the normal channels, I did some googling and found an answer pointing to some generic AC97 drivers from Realtek. Further research showed that this was a common "generic" answer, and one that people "swore black and blue" was the solution. So I downloaded and installed this file.


When I did this, and restarted my machine, the red cross had disappeared from the speaker icon in my traybar. Furthermore, there was an additional traybar icon - a red speaker for the Realtek HD Audio Manager control panel. As well as all of this, there was an additional entry in the Device Manager under Sound, Video and Game Controllers called "Realtek High Definition Audio". The properties of this entry showed me that "This device is working properly".


So, I tested this by playing some music in the Windows Media Player. Stone Silence ... but clicking on the speaker icon in the traybar showed me that the volume meter was moving. So, while my PC is making all these claims that all is well with the speakers, and that the volume is just fine - its not, its all BS.


I tried everything I could think of to make this work. I double and triple checked the connections between the speakers and my PC. I also went into the Realtek HD Audio Manager and tested L and R speakers, and different settings and presets. All to no avail.


Any help appreciated .... the stubborn refusal of my PC's audio to play ball is starting to sh*t me to tears !


regards,
Andrew

If no Win7 driver is found install the Vista driver in compatibility mode
Compatibility Mode

Mathman,

Here's how to fill in those system specs:


HOW TO FILL OUT YOUR SYSTEM SPECS


In the line at the top of www.SevenForums.com you will see UserCP.
That is an abbreviation for User Control Panel.
Click on UserCP.
In the left-hand column, under Your Profile you will see Edit System Spec.
Click on Edit System Spec
You can copy and paste from the output of Speccy, Speccy - System Information - Free Download to fill out much of the info. Be sure to use the Other Info section of your System Specs for such info as your optical drive, your wireless adapter, your speakers, etc.



Now to your audio problem:
No sound in Windows
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