Front Audio and Mic jack issues

[rachel.ann.arnold]

So a month or so ago I posted a similar issue on here and got help correcting, but here I am again, same problem...different cause. I was forced to get new headphones as the mic on my previous ones decided to die within 8 months. On my new headphones (brand new, literally came yesterday), the left ear was fading out slightly, especially when bumping the cord, so I Googled the issue to see if what it was something with my PC or if it was just bad hardware I received, and I found updating drivers could potentially help fix it. So I reinstalled Realtek, and after Realtek uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers, my front audio and mic jacks have once more stopped working and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to fix this. I cannot roll back my Windows 10 update to see that would also resolve it again, as the option is not there in my settings. My Realtek HD Audio Manager in the hidden icons tray also disappeared after the driver re-installation, but got that back by going to my Motherboard's brand driver site and downloading the Realtek driver from there, however, the front jacks are still not working. I'm not sure what I can do at this point and it's very frustrating. I know the jacks didn't just up and die, as the issue was present before and was fixed, and this problem only started after reinstalling the drivers. I was wondering if anyone knew how to fix the front jack problems.

Edit: Also an aside, my back audio jack works, however the back mic jack does not. My PC will pick up that a mic is plugged in, but doesn't actually pick up anything from my mic.

Update: After completely uninstalling Realtek and reinstalling the drivers from my motherboard's site, I got the jacks themselves working again. I had to go into the Realtek Audio Device Manager and check the ""AC97 Front Panel". So they're registering things being plugged in again now. However, my mic is now not getting picked up from either the back jack nor the front jack ports for the mic. Any ideas how to fix this?

My hardware:
Operating System: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
CPU: AMD FX-4300 Vishera 32nm Technology
RAM: 8.00GB Single-Channel DDR3 @ 574MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. M5A97 LE R2.0 (Socket 942)
Graphics Card: NS-24E340A13 (1768x992@30Hz) 4095MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (Gigabyte)
Storage: 931GB Western Digital WDC WD10 EZEX-00RKKA0 SATA Disk Device (SATA)
Optical Drivers: TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-224BB SATA CdRom Device
Audio: Realtek High Definition Audio

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[Grobe]

Any changes to sound caused to touching coords assumes a physical fault somewhere in the wire itself or its connections.
Also remember that all 3,5mm stereo jack sockets are mechanical devices that wear over time - and in most cases it also apply to the soldering points (to mb or small pcb inside the front panel).

 

[rachel.ann.arnold]

Any changes to sound caused to touching coords assumes a physical fault somewhere in the wire itself or its connections.
Also remember that all 3,5mm stereo jack sockets are mechanical devices that wear over time - and in most cases it also apply to the soldering points (to mb or small pcb inside the front panel).

That wasn't even my point though. I know for a fact both the audio and mic jacks on the front haven't stopped working. I had this issue before, as I had already stated. Rolling back to previous version of Windows 10 fixed it. However, this time I went to reinstall Realtek drivers and right after doing that my front audio and mic jacks ceased working. I need help fixing that, not the headphones. The headphones being potentially faulty have nothing to do with Realtek reinstall screwing over my jacks. They haven't just quit. Something with Realtek drivers made them stop working. I lost the Realtek Audio Manager altogether as well until I went and downloaded the drivers through my exact Motherboard's site with driver downloads. And even that didn't fix my audio and mic jack issues. They were working fine until I reinstalled Realtek drivers. And rolling back the Windows 10 update isn't an option in my settings anymore.

 

[Grobe]

Sorry that I just tried to help. You seem to already know what the issue is, and did not give any clue about the hw whatsoever, for all I know you have some completely different soundcard and try to force some drivers from another vendor.
From what you wrote I gave an generic answer that might or might not solve your problem.

 

[rachel.ann.arnold]

Sorry that I just tried to help. You seem to already know what the issue is, and did not give any clue about the hw whatsoever, for all I know you have some completely different soundcard and try to force some drivers from another vendor.
From what you wrote I gave an generic answer that might or might not solve your problem.

Oh, I know you were just trying to help. If I came off blunt, I apologize, I was rather just clarifying that my headphones weren't the issue, rather that both my audio and my mic front jacks have stopped working since I reinstalled the Realtek drivers. I know the re-installation caused it, though not how or why, and was looking on how to fix it. I had this issue prior which I thought was because of a Windows 10 update, considering I had other issues that were fixed by rolling back. But it seems this issue was rather Realtek itself rather than Windows 10, at least it seems that way. And I would just roll back the Windows 10 update once again to see if that once more fixes it, but that option is not longer showing up on my settings (even though I have a Windows.old file).

Also not posting my hardware was my bad, I'll post it now.

Operating System: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
CPU: AMD FX-4300 Vishera 32nm Technology
RAM: 8.00GB Single-Channel DDR3 @ 574MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. M5A97 LE R2.0 (Socket 942)
Graphics Card: NS-24E340A13 (1768x992@30Hz) 4095MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti (Gigabyte)
Storage: 931GB Western Digital WDC WD10 EZEX-00RKKA0 SATA Disk Device (SATA)
Optical Drivers: TSSTcorp CDDVDW SH-224BB SATA CdRom Device
Audio: Realtek High Definition Audio

 

[Grobe]

I cannot say for sure how W10 handles different drivers, but in the old XP days I would typically advice to completely remove any sound card drivers and then try to install one driver known to be working.
Alternatively installthe newest driver, and if that don't work, uninstall that one and get an older driver to see if that works.

Maybe that works with W10 - and if W10 have some mechanism that forces the newest drivers onto the system you need to find a way to go around that. Haven't tried that myself.

Btw : found a similar thread on similar hardware
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-1893593/m5a97-motherboard-sound.html

 

[rachel.ann.arnold]

I cannot say for sure how W10 handles different drivers, but in the old XP days I would typically advice to completely remove any sound card drivers and then try to install one driver known to be working.
Alternatively installthe newest driver, and if that don't work, uninstall that one and get an older driver to see if that works.

Maybe that works with W10 - and if W10 have some mechanism that forces the newest drivers onto the system you need to find a way to go around that. Haven't tried that myself.

Btw : found a similar thread on similar hardware
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-1893593/m5a97-motherboard-sound.html

I already uninstalled and reinstalled everything, multiple times. I've tried older versions of the drivers - didn't seem to help, but rather make things worse. Thing is, everything was working fine the day before yesterday - not conflicts at all. The headphones just bothered me, with a sound issue that I Googled, and I read updating my Realtek drivers could correct it. Downloading the drivers from Realtek's site made everything go wonky. I lost the Realtek HD manager, my front jacks stopped working. So I went to Asus's website and downloaded the drivers from there, and then switching the settings in the manager to "AC97 Front Panel". Everything works fine except my mic won't get picked up. It detects it being plugged in and everything. If I tap the mic, it shows green in the Sound settings tab. Boost doesn't seem to help. If I up the mic volume high enough and listen to my mic on the PC, it starts a really loud noise. If I keep the volume down to about 60, it's fine. What I don't understand is why despite all the things I've tried and it even detecting it, my mic won't get picked up. Is there just a hidden setting somewhere I'm missing that's the magic fix, I don't know. But I'm looking for help with it.

 

[Grobe]

hm - it's difficult to tell if there is a hardware fault or a software issue.

One thing that may clear up that question is by trying to run a Linux live-cd on your hardware - get some audio software (maybe Ubuntu studio have Audacity preinstalled) and try to play sound and record to see if it works.
If it works under Linux, then it is not faulty HW that is the issue.