Front audio jacks not behaving correctly

Razumihin

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Feb 21, 2015
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Hello,

I'm trying to get my front panel headphone and microphone jacks to work normally, meaning that I would like the audio to come through the headphones and not the speakers when they are plugged in, and for the microphone jack to work at all.

I'm using Realtek HD Audio drivers for an Asrock Z87 extreme4 motherboard with a Corsair Carbide series 300R case.

What happens is this: The Realtek audio manager thinks that a headset and microphone are always connected to the front panel jacks, even when nothing is plugged in. I've set the front and rear panels to play separate audio streams and I can set the headphones as the default device, but then my speakers never play any sound because the front jack always shows as connected.

I thought maybe the front panel wasn't connected correctly, so I took the case apart and checked that. Also, my motherboard has a function which will show an overview of everything connected to it in the UEFI utility, which correctly shows when headphones or a microphone are connected to the front jacks.

What can I do to get these jacks to work?
 
Unplugging the front panel from the motherboard has the same results. The UEFI tool shows that the front headphone and mic are disconnected, and the Realtek audio manager thinks that they are still connected. It seems to work fine with the rear panel though. That does show as disconnected when nothing is plugged in to the rear.
 
I just reinstalled Windows around a month ago. These jacks haven't worked since then. I don't think they've ever worked properly since I built the computer around a year ago, but I never really had a reason to use them until recently.
 
Seems to be a common issue, my ASRock H97M Pro4 does the same and I found a lot of identical reports on Google.

It shows the front audio jacks ALWAYS connected even if the frontpanel connector is removed.