I also have had this problem more than once. I have tried almost everything out there as for solutions and none have ever worked. I find that just one random day after booting up the computer is all of a sudden seems to resolve itself. Go figure.
Audio devices disappear after failed update
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Anonymous
My computer (i7-6700K, ASUS Z170-Deluxe, 16MB ram) was working fine until it tried an update to KB50003637. During the update, it BSODed with a PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA error, after which it notified me that the update had failed and attempted to return to its previous state. However, when Windows restarted, I was getting a red X over the speaker icon on the taskbar, along with "No audio output device is installed" and "Speaker Setup (UNKNOWN)" messages when you hover or right-click on the icon, respectively. Running the Audio Troubleshooter only tells me they're sorry that they couldn't fix my problem. I've been using the standard on-board Realtek High Definition audio, and first tried reinstalling the driver, but the problem continued. I checked Device Manager, and both the "Audio inputs and outputs" and "Sound, video, and game controllers" sections had the Realtek device listed, along with the comment that "The device is working properly." I then tried a installing a USB DAC (LH Labs Geek Out 450) I've had sitting around for some time, along with its driver software. Same problem: that device is "working properly," but Windows itself still gives the red X and "No audio output device is installed," etc. messages. Now, this USB DAC has an ASIO driver as part of the software, and apps that can use ASIO (Foobar2000, JRiver Media Center) can be configured to use it via ASIO, and can play audio through it just fine -- but, at the same time, according to Windows, I don't have any audio devices, so none of the programs that don't have ASIO support (the vast majority of them) can't play audio on my computer at all.
Needless to say, I made repeated efforts to reinstall the drivers, with no success. I also repeatedly uninstalled the devices and restarted, but, after the restarts, I had the same devices in place, all "working properly" according to device manager, but unavailable through Windows. I also tried stopping and restarting the "Windows Audio" and "Windows Audio Endpoint Builder" in Services, but that didn't have any effect either.
I checked out the details on each of those drivers in device manager, and found both of them were reporting that the devices could not be migrated because of "due to partial or ambiguous match."
The Realtek device had the following error message in "Events":
Device HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_10EC&DEV_0900&SUBSYS_1043868F&REV_1000\4&27952083&0&0001 was not migrated due to partial or ambiguous match.
Last Device Instance Id: TUSBAUDIO_ENUM\VID_2522&PID_0007&KS\00000040
Class Guid: {4d36e96c-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}
Location Path:
Migration Rank: 0xF000FFFFFFFFF132
Present: false
Status: 0xC0000719
while the LH Labs Geek Out had:
Device SWD\MMDEVAPI{0.0.0.00000000}.{8cb2f8d3-e308-4d89-b3e6-84c96dc89425} was not migrated due to partial or ambiguous match.
Last Device Instance Id: SWD\MMDEVAPI{0.0.0.00000000}.{1b978cd4-4584-49a4-a00b-b64c043eccc1}
Class Guid: {c166523c-fe0c-4a94-a586-f1a80cfbbf3e}
Location Path:
Migration Rank: 0xF00000000000F100
Present: false
Status: 0xC0000451
Can this give any clue on how this problem can be fixed? I've tried every "standard" step for such problems, and am completely at a loss right now. Is there a way I can get back my audio without having to take the drastic step of a clean install?
Windows for home | Windows 10 | Devices and drivers
Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.
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Anonymous
2021-07-02T14:27:27+00:00 -
Anonymous
2021-08-10T12:30:26+00:00 I can confirm that this workaround works also for me (I had the same problem as described by other users).
Also, for a more permanent fix, I used the solution pointed out in a comment of the video above:
which consists on changing a field in the Windows Registry.
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Anonymous
2021-08-10T23:01:28+00:00 I can confirm that this workaround works also for me (I had the same problem as described by other users).
Also, for a more permanent fix, I used the solution pointed out in a comment of the video above:
which consists on changing a field in the Windows Registry.
The registry fix worked like a charm! My audio is back where it should be after a restart. :-)
I can imagine not everyone has another working pc at hand, so this is the content of the reg file to change the value of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations] "ConsoleSecurity" as described here: https://www.dell.com/community/Latitude/Latitude-5400-no-sound-after-May-2021-Windows-update/m-p/7999487/highlight/true#M35018
*************************************start of reg file*****************************************************
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Terminal Server\WinStations]
"ConsoleSecurity"=hex:01,00,14,80,9c,00,00,00,a8,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,14,00,00,\
00,02,00,88,00,06,00,00,00,00,00,14,00,01,00,00,00,01,01,00,00,00,00,00,05,\
04,00,00,00,00,00,14,00,bf,03,0f,00,01,01,00,00,00,00,00,05,12,00,00,00,00,\
00,14,00,89,00,0f,00,01,01,00,00,00,00,00,05,13,00,00,00,00,00,14,00,81,00,\
00,00,01,01,00,00,00,00,00,05,14,00,00,00,00,00,18,00,bf,03,0f,00,01,02,00,\
00,00,00,00,05,20,00,00,00,20,02,00,00,00,00,18,00,21,01,00,00,01,02,00,00,\
00,00,00,05,20,00,00,00,2b,02,00,00,01,01,00,00,00,00,00,05,12,00,00,00,01,\
01,00,00,00,00,00,05,12,00,00,00
***********************************end of reg file******************************************************
Make a backup of your registry or create a restore point.
Open notepad, copy & paste the text between the ******** (not the *************** themselves!) into the new document and save as a file with a .reg extension. Double click the newly created file, confirm the pop-up questions and your registry has been repaired.
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Anonymous
2021-08-11T02:00:51+00:00 Wow, thank you every one who have put in some input here to help the rest of us. I eventually simply did a fresh Windows install on another harddrive since mine was getting kind of old anyway. And the new one is a SSD so now it runs like a dream. Such a pain in the butt to get everything reinstalled the way I like it, but it actually runs and looks better since before I've been simply updating and cloning my drives going all the way back to probably Windows XP so the fresh install actually probably got rid of a lot of clutter in unused Windows files from previous versions I probably had in the old install. I'm noticing basically no errors in Windows updates now when before it seemed every update would crash or cause some other problem... So maybe the audio bug helped motivate me to finally do a fresh install to make it run better, lol.
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Anonymous
2021-09-17T14:28:12+00:00 I had the same problem after a failed update. I tried many of the suggestions of updating/reinstalling drivers, restarting windows audio services, running the audio troubleshooter, running dism and sfc etc. None of which made the blind bit of difference.
For me I found the solution here: https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2238479-windows-10-no-audio-output-device-is-installed from Bill1420 on Jan 27, 2021.
What fixed it for me in "Sound Settings" under "Related Settings" there is "Ease of Access audio settings" menu which has "Turn on Mono Audio". I toggled this and my audio outputs reappeared. I went back and turned it off again and the outputs were still there. I am a happy man,