Lost HD Audio on Assassin HTPC! Was it the recent Windows Update?

gowestwardho · 26 Aug 2014

Lost HD Audio on Assassin HTPC! Was it the recent Windows Update?
All of the sudden I have lost my HD audio output on my Assassin HTPC with ASUS Graphics Card and AMD chipset. I can see audio on the level meter but nothing comes from the speakers. I know if is not the TV or the Onkyo Tuner. Once in a while when playing in the speakers panels I receive the following error message which I have not seen before: "The device is being used by another application. If you continue, that application may stop working." It does not matter is I answer Yes or No, I still get no sound.

I've searched online and it appears others started losing their audio around the time of the July Windows Updates. I was on a 7 week trip then so all of my Windows updates may have gotten loaded when I returned home last week! (When the problem started).

I have already removed all the Windows updates back to before the July ones and shut off auto updates. I have already attempted removing and reinstalling audio drivers. I am at the PONR (point of no return) where I will need to do a total system recovery from disk unless someone knows of the solution. Was this caused by a Windows update as some maintain? And does anyone know how to get around this? After all I have about 8 weeks of great TV recorded that I cannot watch. (Thank God I can still plug in my HD laptop into the TV and watch downloads, albeit without surround sound, or else I'd be going nuts)

Anyone???

fireberd · 26 Aug 2014

What audio are you using, the HDMI Audio or the PC Audio? Two different items. In most cases the HDMI audio is generated by the sound chip on the Video Card and with HDMI audio, the PC's audio is not used.

Instead of uninstalling the updates, you really need to do a System Restore if you have one available.

I had to use that today, I had installed the WPS Suite of office programs (used to be called Kingsoft) and it corrupted my MS Word and Outlook. I uninstalled the WPS using Revo Uninstaller Pro which also scans the registry for left over entries and allows for deleting them. After a system reboot, I still had the corruption problems caused by WPS. Fortunately I had a System Restore point that was before I installed WPS and that fixed the problems.