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
    2021-12-22T20:35:20+00:00

    hello i did that in registry and reboot and now i get an error something related to interactive connection and a black screen cannot go at the login screen

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-10-24T07:20:02+00:00

    Hi Sabrena, I haven't been able to solve the problem properly. All I do is, when it automatically updates, I go back to previous update. Then, whenever I turn the computer off, I do it manually with the button on top of the pc.. If I try going to start,.shut down.... windows is there waiting to update, so I avoid it by turning off manually. Then sometimes around 5 pm I come by and see it's busily starting to update again, and telling me not to turn the pc off, so I quickly turn it off manually. Then when I turn it on again, there's a message saying it's undoing the changes, which makes me happy! That's the only way I've found of keeping my audio. I don't know if it matters that I'm missing out on my updates. Does any one have a better idea? Thanks

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  3. Anonymous
    2021-10-23T15:11:34+00:00

    Hello,

    I have the same issue except on your steps above: "-Expand the Sound and Video Game Controllers" that isn't showing on my Device Manager. When I go to >View >Show hidden devices, there it is with only Microsoft Streaming Service Proxy as a sub. Nothing else. Can you help me?

    Blessings,

    Sabrena

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  4. Anonymous
    2021-10-06T16:35:48+00:00

    THANK YOU SO MUCH! I have been having ‘no audio output devices installed’ every time my PC updated, I had tried everything but this worked! You are a life saver!!

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  5. Anonymous
    2021-08-21T19:36:06+00:00

    Had the same issue after some updates (no output or input devices found). Tried the standard fixes (reinstall drivers, restart, etc.). I then ran the commands noted in the update to the original post and restarted the service. The devices came back, and audio is working again.

    I am on 21H1 and the updates I received prior to this issue today were KB5005033 and KB5004331.

    Considering the fix, I suspect that this has to do with a security change to mitigate privilege escalation methods (e.g. PrintNightmare stuff maybe).

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