KB5003173 Killed my audio

Anonymous
2021-05-16T22:22:22+00:00

"No Audio Output Devices Installed"

This morning when I logged onto my pc, there was a red X over my speaker icon next to the clock in the tray.

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UPDATE 5/18/2021: SOLUTION WAS THE FOLLOWING:

I figured it out.  

I opened CMD prompt as Admin and ran the following commands.

net localgroup Administrators /add localservice

net localgroup Administrators /add networkservice

I then restarted the Windows Audio service in services.msc

And what do you know, my audio is back!

It appears windows Update removed the service accounts from the Administrators groups and never put them back.

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This must have happened sometime on 5/15 as on 5/14 there was no issue.

I checked my Sound control panel and found that there are no Output/Playback or Input/Recording devices anymore...

I then checked my audio drivers and no issues at all...

I then ran the Sound troubleshooter, and it didn't do anything to help.

I uninstalled all my audio drivers and reinstalled them, but no change.  Rather strangely, I tried installing my original version RealTek Audio driver... It would uninstall my current drivers, and then install the new ones, then prompt for restart.  After restart, it opened the installer again and asked to do the same uninstall/install/reboot.  No matter how many times I did this, the Driver MSI package kept opening on boot.  Perhaps windows was preventing it from installing?

I checked my BIOS to see if audio was disabled there, but it was enabled.

I checked Windows Update, and saw that an update KB5003173 failed and wanted me to retry.  It would not work.  I did a sfc /scannow and DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth.  I checked my Aorus drivers and saw there was an AMD chipset update, so I installed it.  After reboot, the KB5003173 successfully installed.

Audio still broken at this point...

I tried to uninstall KB5003173 but it didn't work and I got this...

I then cruised this MS Answers site and found tons of other people with the same issue, but none of the proposed solutions seemed to work for them or I.  One of them even recommended doing an In-place Windows 10 Upgrade / Install.  I did this and guess what? It's still broken.

I checked my update history, and these are the only things that installed or tried to install on 5/15/21:

This originally had a date of 5/15, but I got to it work today on 5/16.

The only other things were these....

Windows Defender is my only security software.

My Hardware:

Why does this say no sound card found???????

I have also since flashed my Bios to F33J which is the newest version released just 2 weeks ago.  Audio still broken.

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Windows update

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-07-19T15:17:16+00:00

    Latitude 5400- No Sound after May-2021 windows update - Page 4 - Dell Community

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations

    The ConsoleSecurity shows as Zero-Length Binary Value

    You can import the following.

    "O:SYG:SYD:(A;;CC;;;IU)(A;;0xf03bf;;;SY)(A;;CCSWLOSDRCWDWO;;;LS)(A;;CCLO;;;NS)(A;;0xf03bf;;;BA)(A;;CCWPCR;;;RD)S:NO_ACCESS_CONTROL"

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-07-02T19:26:04+00:00

    Glad you found the post!

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  3. Anonymous
    2021-07-01T13:25:04+00:00

    After hours and hours of trying to update and replace drivers, I saw your post. It worked. Thank you soooooo much !!!!

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  4. Anonymous
    2021-06-18T18:14:40+00:00

    Hi  Philip,

    I  am  also  facing  same  issue  but  since  the  update  on   May  18. I  lost  my  audio... I'm just  doing  the workaround  daily by  running  the  below  cmd  scripts  and  manually   starting  the audio  service. Once  i  restart my  pc  i  need  to  do  it  again 

     net localgroup Administrators /add localservice

    net localgroup Administrators /add networkservice

    I then restarted the Windows Audio service in services.msc

    Still  not   found  a  permanent solution

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  5. Anonymous
    2021-06-17T02:17:38+00:00

    I was very interested you fixed that audio problem by running those commands you mention in your latest post. I'm not tech savvy but can you explain how I could do the same fix? Thanks

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