Realtek drivers don't work in windows 7 rtm

[svenvandevelde]

I was a succesful tester of Windows 7 RC, where the realtek audio drivers worked flawlessly. Recently i purchased and installed windows RTM Home Premium.

If you have the following symptoms when reinstalling windows 7 RTM with the realtek audio:
- No Realtek icon in the taskbar
- Cannot active the realtek driver window from control panel.
- The windows audio playing devices do not show up when requested...

well:

For some reason, the realtek driver or Windows 7 RTM are not compatible anymore with RTM got released.
The problem is not with the driver, however, but with User Accounts Management security settings.
Install the latest driver from Realtek, which you find on the www.realtek.com. The version of the driver currently is 235.
Then, disable UAC through Control Panel -> System -> Change User Account Management, and reboot.

You'll notice now that the Realtek driver taskbar icon (the brown luidspeaker) shows up in your taskbar. Good news.
Click on the taskbar icon, and the RT driver windows shows up. In this window, you can change the driver operating from Stereo to 5.1.

Clearly, some things are wrong with audio in RTM. Because you cannot open the audio play devices dialog through the windows luidspeaker icon and right clicking the option from the menu.

So, maybe this is a preliminary work around.

Sven,

 

[Zidane24]

I have had no issue with installing the Realtek driver in Windows 7 RTM...

You might be an exception

 

[The Stodd]

There are loads of people having surround issues - not just with Realtek but with other sound as well.

The common (and my own problem) is that 5.1 works in test mode (Windows AND Realtek sound manager) yet no app plays 5.1, everything is in stereo.

From what I've seen it's not exclusively a Realtek problem either, some people with Creative cards are posting the same problem which makes me think something is different in Windows 7 and M$ aren't acknowledging it...

I've literally spent 3 days trawling everywhere for a solution - there doesn't appear to be one. Speakerfill is not a solution, it just emulates front stereo.

You can get the Realtek icon without changing device manager - you just need to change options on the system tray to "show icons and notifications". And this in no way fixes the 5.1 problem above.

Guess we have to wait for either M$ or Realtek to address this.