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Realtek HD Audio Driver Randomly Stopped Working and Disappeared
Realtek HD Audio Drivers randomly failed after about a month of perfect operation.
The icon for Realtek has vanished, and the audio manager is nowhere to be found in the control panel. Realtek is no longer seen in Device Manager as well. Playback Devices menu shows nothing related to Realtek like it previously did.
Now my front and back audio ports do not detect anything. Only the HDMI audio is working via my monitor speakers. All other peripherals are working fine as well (I don't have anything to test the mic ports).
I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers multiple times, from both the version given on the Realtek site and Gigabyte site. The HD Manager is still nowhere to be found.
I tried manually installing the driver to the device manager via the "Install Legacy Driver" and receive "This device cannot start. (Code 10)" as the device status. I have NVIDIA High Definition Audio also installed and working perfectly. I tried uninstalling all of my audio drivers (including the High Definition Audio Controllers in the System Devices categories) only for it to reinstall my NVIDIA drivers that I believe supply the HDMI sound.
I am under the impression that Realtek is supposed to install to both Program Files and Program Files (x86)? It is only installing to the latter every time I try to uninstall and reinstall. A search for RAVCpl64.exe yields nothing.
I am currently running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.
Specs for my custom build pc:
MOBO: GIGABYTE GA-Z97X-SLI LGA 1150 Intel Z97 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K Devil's Canyon Quad-Core 3.5GHz LGA 1150 Desktop Processor BX80646I54690K
RAM: Team Vulcan 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory (Yellow Heat Spreader) Model
SSD (Where OS is Installed): Intel 530 Series SSDSC2BW120A4K5 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
GPU: GIGABYTE GV-N770OC-2GD G-SYNC Support GeForce GTX 770 2GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 HDCP Ready WindForce 3X..
I'm beginning to suspect it's a hardware issue with my motherboard (although it might possibly be some sort of conflict), as it was working perfectly fine this morning before I shut it down. There were no updates to Windows, and I even tried a system restore just to be safe. I scanned my computer with Malwarebytes and it found nothing.
I have also checked my BIOS, it says that on-board sound is enabled.
Please help me solve my problem; I can't use my awesome headphones or speakers, and my monitor speakers sound awful I'm all out of ideas. I've gone through all the possible solutions I could find, and I am at my wit's end. Again, it's been working perfectly for about a month now since I've built it.