Graphics driver kills sound in Windows 10

[Mike-1965]

I have been unable to find an answer to this specific problem, despite reading a lot of posts about Windows 10 sound issues.

ASUS Z170-M Plus motherboard with Realtek ALC887 and Windows 10 64-bit (fresh install). All the drivers, BIOS, OS, etc. are the most recent versions.

Whenever I install the custom video driver, the sound is killed. This appears to only happen with the video driver. The same thing appears to happen with Nvidia and Radeon cards and drivers.

I have tried lots of different configurations, but the end result is the same, everything works find UNTIL the video driver is installed.

On one test, I was able to get sound from the motherboard (Realtek), a Xonar DSX, and the video card's HDMI sound driver. I could switch back and forth between them, and they all worked. However, as soon as I installed the custom video driver rather than the generic windows video driver the only sound that worked was HDMI. All the drivers said they were installed correctly and functioning, but they weren't.

I also tried setups with either an Nvidia or AMD card, with the same results. Everything works fine until the video driver is installed. If I use DDU to uninstall the video driver, things work again.

What is going on? Does anyone have any workarounds for this?

 

[Eggz]

Have you tried assigning the proper playback device in "Sound" under Control Panel? Usually a GPU will add a playback device, and it often just switches the default to something other than the device you have plugged in. It may be more complicated than that, but there's no reason to get into it if the fix is simple - fingers crossed that it is!

 

[Mike-1965]

Yes, I have checked, changed, and fiddled until I was ready to pull my hair out.

As I mentioned, I can change between various audio devices and get them all to work UNTIL the video driver is installed. That one additional driver screws everything up ...

I have built a lot of computers over the years, and sometimes sound chips can be a pain, but I have never had this problem.

 

[Eggz]

Yeah, that's weird. I'm not sure. I'd just do a DDU to go fresh. If that didn't work, I'd start cramming in to different PCI-e ports, whatever it took to exhaust all the possibilities. Sorry to not be of more help than that.

 

[Bradleyvarol]

I presume you are not installing the "NVIDIA HD Audio Drivers" correct? Or perhaps you are AMD, in which case i have no idea :/