[SOLVED] "Audio Device is Disabled"...um, not

I have a baffling problem with the Windows audio service. All of the parts appear to be "working properly" with two exceptions:

1. The little speaker icon in the taskbar has the red-circled X and the info balloon says "No speakers or headphones are plugged in" and, when I select troubleshoot, the finding is that the audio device is turned off.

2. In Control Panel, selecting Adjust system volume produces an empty dialogue box with the words "No audio device is installed" and a pop-up menu with "Speakers (RealTek High-Definition Audio)" and "RealTek Digital Output ((RealTek High-Definition Audio)"

The driver is the latest version downloaded from Gigabyte's site yesterday. RealTek Sound Manager recognizes that my headphones are plugged into the front panel jack and says everything is okay. Device manager indicates that all devices are operating properly. All devices are enabled. All of the necessary services appear to be running.

But. No audio is available. I did have audio until recently but apparently something was changed. Not sure what.

Any insight would be most appreciated.

Thanks!

That is a very strange problem! Do you know the audio controller that you've got (or motherboard if it's onboard)?

I'll have a look and see if I can find any known issues or workarounds .

I have always had the same issue. If I adjust the volume slider it goes away. My sound device is HDAudio.

In the Control Panel, in Sound under the Playback tab in the window below the tab do a right-click and select: "Show Disabled Devices". You will probably see an icon that looks like a PCI sound card, click on it to "enable it" and you should be good to go.

Hi gang-
I'll try some of these out when I get home from work.
Ian - I've got a Gigabyte GA-770TA-UD3 with onboard sound. Codec is Realtek ALC888, North Bridge: AMD 770, South Bridge: AMD SB710 (I'm not sure if either of these has anything to do with the audio).
Roban - I can't see the slider. Windows tells me that no audio device is connected and refuses to show it.
Nibiru2012 - I think I tried that already, but I'll have another go.

One thought - is it possible that the Windows HD Audio driver and the Realtek driver are in conflict?

Oh, and I think the "change" that triggered this is that I re-installed Windows 7 since the original was corrupted (defective DVD drive).

On your reinstall of Windows 7; did you do a clean install?

Have you downloaded and installed the Realtek driver from their website?

I've had several experiences with audio not working when installing Windows 7/Vista on a system built to run XP. When I'd install Win 2K/XP Pro or Mint, there would be no problem. But when installing 7 or Vista onto some of those systems, the multimedia audio controller is not installed. Why? I don't know. But sometimes you can download all of the drivers you want, and still have no volume. Go into your device manager to verify this, "multimedia audio controller" will have a yellow question mark.

The only way to solve this is to have a driver disc for your make & model of computer. On my laptop, whenever I install 7, this always happens. If this is your problem, driver discs can be found for many older systems on eBay for $5. The disc will have all kinds of testing and benchmarking tools, too. Every computer owner needs a custom disc like this for these situations, especially if it's a Dell. But it may apply to others, too.

Nibiru2012, I'm not sure what constitutes a clean install - I reformatted the partition if that's what you mean, since it wouldn't take otherwise. And, yes, I've tried loading the drivers from the Realtek site and Gigabyte's sound driver. Same results. I've also tried it without the driver installed. Also no dice.

I just had a look at the Sound panel and don't see what you're describing. But here's what's weird: I can't disable anything in this panel. Even on the Properties panel, I can select "Disable" on the pop-up but after closing and re-opening, it's still enabled.

Catilley1092, this is a new machine - I built it from parts (new ones - check the specs under my name), so there isn't any XP residual stuff hanging around so I don't think that an old driver disk will help. If it were the computer I was using before that might be a good idea but it has XP and I was quite happy with that.

Did you go into the Realtek HD Audio Manager in the Control Panel and try configuring the problem from there?

Does your GPU have HDMI output with a built in audio controller? I would uninstall the driver, run driver sweeper, reboot, reboot again into windows and see if the built in driver will work. Try connecting some speakers via line out and see if they are found.