No Audio Output Driver Installed On System Startup/Reboot. HELP!

[robmaher]

Hi Guys,

About a month ago i had my new dell XPS 17' (L702x) Laptop Delivered.
After a few days (and many driver & software updates) i started to get a "stuttering" problem while listening to music/ watching videos etc. Also Noticed the computer being quite laggy (mouse cursor would skip around from time to time when moving it).

So i decided to do a reformat, free of all the useless dell addons etc.

- Successfully Reinstalled Windows 7 Professional Service Pack 1,

- Installed my basic drivers off the dell resource CD that came with the laptop.
-Intel PROSet Lan & WiFi Drivers,
-Realtek Audio Drivers,
-Nvidia Video Drivers,
-Renesus usb 3.0 host controller,
-Dell Quickset.

-Now that my network drivers were going, i downloaded and installed all relevant windows updates.

-Then, i installed the programs i commonly use:
-Zone Alarm Antivirus (from reading other forums McAfee may have been the cause of some of the issues i was having so i didn't want to re-install that just yet.)
-iTunes,
-vlc,
-Stereoscopic3D Player (yes, i got the 3D Screen + Nvidia Glasses upgrade )
-Magic Disk virtual disk drive
-winrar
-Microsoft office 2010 professional
-Steam & Origin (CS:S, CS:GO Beta, MW3, Crysis, BF3)

After doing all of this everything seemed to work fine. played music for hours without stuttering, watched a few movies, played a few games. all worked great!

until,

i noticed i couldn't access my Waves MaxxAudio audio manager.?

Now, heres where i think the problem occured:

in the package of disks that came with the laptop i found a creative xfi soundblaster cd, so i figured i might have to install that.

so i did.

and when completed, the pop up quoting "This Program Might Not Have Installed Correctly" or along those lines, appeared, Giving me the options "Reinstall using recomended settings", or, "This program is installed correctly".

So i did a reboot, and tried again.

Same issue.

So i decided to uninstall and leave it.

But after rebooting again i noticed my little sound icon down the bottom right had a red x on it. so i clicked it and it automatically did its troubleshooting thing and reinstalled the realtek drivers and BAM! i had sound again.

So i tried another reboot.........................

And theres that little red X again.

I have spent the last 2 days uninstalling and reinstaling, updating and rollbacking of the realtek drivers, deleting all realtek and creative files from both "program files" folders, deleting all realtek and creative entries in the registry, and trying again, and evrytime, it installs successfully, but after a reboot its like windows has forgotten where the driver is and i get the little red x again.

Becoming a real pain having to reinstall the driver every startup.

A big nuisance to such a great laptop.

Somebody please help!

 

[fireberd]

Too bad you did a disc reinstall, that invalidated the Dell recovery partition (accessed by F8 at power on) and you will not be able to use that for reinstalls if needed.

The Soundblaster could be a software enhancement to the RealTek as Dell has used this on some systems or it could have just been a mistake. You can look at the Dell invoice and see what came with the PC.

Did you try a System Restore back to a date prior to installing the SoundBlaster software? If not give that a try.

Back to the stuttering. That can be a driver issue (make sure you use the Dell supplied sound driver as we have found, on the Dell forum, that non Dell drivers either do not work or do not work correctly). You can check the Dell downloads to see if there is an updated driver.

You can look over the Dell manual install instructions, too, in case something was skipped during the install.
Windows 7 Manual Reinstall | Dell

Dell has a users helping users forum for help. The Laptop hardware section is Here:
Laptop - Dell Community

 

[DELLshomprakash]

Hi Rob,

I would be happy to assist you with this issue.
As you have mentioned, you've done a clean re-installation of your operating system which would effectively remove the factory restoration image. One way to restore audio on your machine is to

1. Boot the machine into Safe Mode (Upon powering on, keep tapping F8 on the Keyboard and Select Safe Mode from the Advance Boot Options Menu that appears)

2. Go to the Device Manager Panel (Right click on My Computer> Select 'Properties' > Click on 'Device Manager' on Left Pane)

3. Expand the tab that says Sound, Video and Game Controllers.

4. For each entry that you see on the list, repeat this drill:

a. Right click on the device
b. Select Uninstall Device
c. If you see a check-box that says "Delete Driver software for this device", tick the same.
d. Click "Uninstall".


5. Perform a Normal Restart.

Windows 7 should be successfully able to load native drivers for your machine audio configuration.

Now, Kindly use the following link to download and update the audio driver configuration available for your system type:

[FONT=&quot]http://www.filehippo.com/download_realtek_high_definition_audio_vista_64/tech/

[/FONT] If you still face issues after the previous steps, Kindly reply here. I will try to help you to the best of my knowledge and ability.

-Shomprakash@Dell
#iwork4dell

 

[fireberd]

As a Dell Rockstar, I do not agree with the new Dell trainee's suggestions.