Fresh install windows 7 64 on newly built machine, no onboard Audio

[djsmith4]

First time posting after lurking for solutions for awhile, great site.

CPU Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor
Motherboard ASRock H97M Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard
Memory Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Memory Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Storage Transcend 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive
Storage Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Video Card Gigabyte Radeon R9 390 8GB Video Card
Case Corsair Carbide Series 88R MicroATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply Cooler Master VSM 650W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply

Built the machine above. Haven't built a machine in over 10 years, had the urge and the money, built it and felt great. Have had a lot of software/Windows/driver issues, but eventually resolved all of them except this one. Sound is not working at all.

Here is the link to imgur gallery of (cellphone) screenshots: Troubleshooting sound - Album on Imgur

In bottom right task bar, there is a red x over the speaker icon, when hovering above it it says "no speakers or headphones are connected," (they are of course). (Picture 1 in Gallery) Along with this problem, Realtek is not coming up anywhere in the device manager, I only have "AMD High Definition Audio Device" and "High Definition Audio Device." (Picture 2 in Gallery)

When I look for driver updates on the "AMD" one it says it is up to date. When I do it for "High Definition Audio Device," it gives me an error that the extended attributes are inconsistent (Picture 3), followed by a Driver Installation Module error message (Picture 4).

My playback devices are certainly wrong (Picture 5), it doesn't list headphones or speaker or anything I am used to.

Although Realtek doesn't show up in device manager, it is there to be uninstalled (Picture 6)

In regards to installing drivers. Ive downloaded and installed, in varying orders back and forth, both the audio drivers for my mobo (top link here: []ASRock > H97M ) and the drivers from the realtek website. Anytime I re-install (just be clicking the setup.exe again) the drivers I downloaded from ASRock mobo site, they "work" i.e. no errors. Occasionally, 50-50 let's say, when I try and install the drivers I downloaded from Realtek, I get this error message (Picture 7), Error code 0x000000FF.

This doesn't happen every time, which seems very strange to me. Throughout all my troubleshooting I've installed and reinstalled the drivers over and over again.



I have tried a wide variety of solutions to no avail. Of the ones I've tried off the top of my head:
-in BIOS, onboard audio was set to "auto" and I set it to "enabled"
-as written above, installed and reinstalled both sets of drivers
-(Picture 8) some solutions indicated disabling something like "Microsoft UUB" because it interferes, but I don't even have that
-windows is up to date barring a few optional ones (Picture 9)
Post relevant photos of build/parts here. Link to gallery again: Troubleshooting sound - Album on Imgur

My leading hypothesis is the video card, capable of handling sound, is somehow superseding the onboard audio. My monitor is not plugged into the HDMI port. One of the main reasons I think this is because (embarrassingly stupid on my part) I first installed windows 7 32 bit on my machine. Obviously had a bunch of issues, mainly being that my graphics card was never recognized. However, the sound worked out of the gate, with current speaker plug in arrangement. Realized my mistake, reinstalled windows, got the graphics card up and running but couldn't get sound to work (played a few steam games last night on high settings, ran smooth, just no sound).

Sorry for the long winded post, just trying to be thorough. At work right now, so can't troubleshoot until tonight around 630PM EST, but wanted to see if there are any ideas yet. Will be able to answer questions (if I can without being in front of machine) for another half hour before trekking home.

Thank you so much in advance

 

[fireberd]

Welcome to the forum, we will try to help.

First, here is how to post screenshots on the forum. You don't need to host them somewhere else. Also use the "snipping tool" and you can capture copies of screen items.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/9733-screenshots-files-upload-post-seven-forums.html

The two audio devices, AMD is for HDMI audio. The "High Definition Audio" device is usually the generic, basic function, Windows installed driver, when the correct hardware driver is not installed.

In the BIOS, many times there is one entry to enable or disable the on-board audio but there can also be another entry to enable or disable audio ports. Check the BIOS again. Maybe even reset the BIOS.

Second, reinstall the Intel Motherboard Chipset drivers. One of the things the chipset drivers do is identify (define) all the devices including the Sound. If it is not being detected correctly that can be an issue.

Finally, it could be a Windows OS problem and in that case it will take a complete new (clean) install.

 

[djsmith4]

Solved

Thank you for your reply and the good advice on posting screenshots!

Last night, following my suspicion, I was able to (magically?) solve the problem.

I removed my video card and then booted up with the monitor attached to the mobo on board video. I then windows updated (the drivers and sound still didn't install/work respectively) and then rebooted after windows update. Upon reboot I had sound, and then was able to install the Realtek drivers and actually see Realtek in my device manager. So I knew it was a video card problem, it was hijacking the audio somehow.

I reinstalled the video card, booted up, and BINGO! I had sound. Didn't have to change a thing. Perhaps because Realtek was installed it remained recognized and the video card took a back seat audio-wise? I'm not positive, but it worked and I am very happy. Played a lot of Grim Dawn with buddies to celebrate.