March Windows 8.1 update broke Realtek I2S audio

Anonymous
2015-03-31T21:34:51+00:00

Hi, I have a Samsung XE500T1C slate that till the beginning of March was working great.  After a Windows update the slate never booted back into Windows.  A system restore worked fine till the next week when the Windows updates were re-installed.  Regrettably my restore point was gone and I had to restore to factory and then upgrade to Windows 8.1.

After the update to 8.1 I was again not able to boot up.  Restarting in safe mode and eliminating devices one at a time revealed the Realtek I2S audio device was causing the problem.  Searching Bing (ok it was Google that found it) shows other have the same issue. 

As long as I leave the audio device disabled my slate works fine.  When I enable it audio works but the camera operational LED turns on.  Then if I restart the slate it never boots back up and its back to safe mode to disable the Realteck I2S audio device.

Windows 8.1 is fully updated.  My slate system software is fully updated...All updates are in place so please don't suggest that!

Removing the Windows updates that came down on March 10th did not work.

Any ideas how to get audio back?

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Devices and drivers

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-06-01T00:46:42+00:00

    Since we're not making a lot of progress with this by trying to be specific, can we back up a little bit?

    Can MIcrosoft confirm the KB numbers of all the updates that were pushed in the month of March, 2015?

    If we can possibly roll back these updates, we can maybe confirm that without them the sound drivers work.  From there, perhaps we can manually push the updates until we find the one that breaks everything.

    I'd really like to see some forward movement on this topic, even if we're doing it in a very rudimentary "divide and conquer" process...

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  2. Anonymous
    2015-06-01T14:16:29+00:00

    Hi ParrotBob

    I think this will only work if you have a fresh/upgrade install of 8.1 from when it was first released.  The 8.1 iso you can download of MS already has the March 2015 patch baked into it (I believe since as soon as I install the sound drivers on a clean Windows install the System will lock up on reboot), I do not think we could un-install them.

    If a MS rep could verify this, then we just may have a way of figuring out this issue.

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  3. Anonymous
    2015-06-01T15:25:39+00:00

    Based on what I have read and seen myself, any version of Windows 8.1 that was released after March does indeed have the patch baked in...

    A couple things.. I am virtually certain the problem came with the updates that were delivered on March 10, 2015.  I was up to date on my updates at that point.  I turned my tablet on early on the morning of March 11 and it started doing the update process.  It was after the updates completed that the machine would not boot any more.

    So I'm hoping that the narrowing of the date will help in figuring out which update is the culprit.  It looks like there were a number of updates pushed on 3/10/15, but at least the needle is in a smaller haystack now.

    Also, does Microsoft (or anyone) keep archived builds of Windows 8.1?  If we could get a build from just prior to March 10 we could perhaps run the gamut one update at a time until we find the one that breaks the sound card drivers... 

    There has to be a way to systematically find the offending data!

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  4. Anonymous
    2015-06-01T17:08:09+00:00

    I also have some issue, but on another Hardware using the same codec. i can boot but i can only get Sound through headphones,.

    It is time to advance and offer some solution!

    it is Microsofts responsibility to check compability with signed Drivers, not end users!

    It is not our Job to find the update which broke it,it is Microsofts.

    i am sitting on a tablet, 3 days old, and just after updating it does not work like before.

    i cannot understand why your QA does not test with a Major Driver.

    i accidently replied on a previous post.

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  5. Anonymous
    2015-06-01T23:26:13+00:00

    Chatted online with Samsung and all they could say was:

    "Edward: So it might not be compatible with the tablet that is why it is not allowing the update."

    So I wonder if this will still be the case with Windows 10?  No sound or no upgrade.

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