[SOLVED] Having problem with Audio and ACPI (power) drivers

[xenthia]

Hi there everyone, I hope you are all seeing this post in wellness and health.

A few days ago I decided to update my Windows 10 x64 machine (laptop). I was a tiny bit worried about malware infections so I asked a friend of mine if anything could help me with the situation. One thing led to another, and finally he told me that one way that 'might' help the situation with audio spyware and such would probably be offline image update using DISM. Initially it made sense, because having a trustable and verified update package, while the system is down, can in some cases, replace the sensitive system files that might have been infected by an APTxx or persistent malware or rootkit of some kind. So I downloaded the msu (Microsoft update package for my version of Windows 10) on my Ubuntu machine transferred it to a flash USB stick , turned off the laptop, logged into X recovery environment and then used the command:
Dism /Image:C:\ /LogPath:D:\AddPackage.log /Add-Package /PackagePath:F:\xxxxxxxxxxxxx.msu
At first it gave me a few errors regarding missing files. After I examined the log file, I noticed it was saying something about a driver. Then I used the command:
Dism /Image:C:\ /Get-Drivers
to get the list of the drivers, and then out of the blue and utter stupidity I decided to remove all third party drivers using the command:
Dism /Image:C:\ /Remove-Driver /Driver:OEM1.inf /Driver:OEM2.inf ... ... ...
And I mean all of 'em folks. (by the way this is not the punchline yet 😀)
the reason why I did that was that I am doing this whole thing to remove possible spyware and malware right?! so let us remove all the third party stuff ( I know right? 😵 )
Then after that I ran the update command mentioned above again, and it failed still.
So, I was thinking that perhaps there is a driver issue somewhere that is keeping widows from being able to update. Obviously, then I tried to look into "C:\Windows\INF\setupapi.offline.log" for errors and vola!! it was saying something about a driver failing to install (I don't recall its name) and then I decided to remove all of them using pnputil so I logged back into Windows and I removed all the drivers like it was the hunting season for drivers (😵 🙁😀🤣😒 you are welcome to laugh now) to later I notice that I was getting a blue screen trying to log back into windows and boot either hanging or giving me blue screens. Annnnyyyywaays, after a long log file examination and fixing and copying files from a healthy working system, I fixed the blue screen, I could log back into the system, and I then I decided to install the missing drivers from the website of my laptop. It was finally fixed or seemed like it and I was finally able to update the windows using DISM in offline X recovery environment. Then I logged back into windows, all was ok, there is now a problem:
All drivers install without any kind of errors in the log files, BUT I have no audio and my ACPI (or lenovo power control for the battery no longer work)
is not working.
All other drivers including the keyboard and the mouse now work just fine, but I don't have any audio.
at first I thought maybe the hardware was damaged, but then I used an Ubuntu live disk and audio, ACPI and all was working like a charm.

On this laptop I mostly code and try to help the open source community, so you would do me a huge favor if you help me fix its driver issues that I have caused because reinstalling windows would take me a long while considering all the projects and file that I have to move and the sessions that I would have to restore.

Thank you guys in advance 💐 🌈 💝

 

[Lutfij]

First off, I think you overdid it with the removing spyware from drivers method. In fact some of that driver is necessary for the audio to function properly, I can vouch for that since Alienware laptop's need a proprietary driver version in order to work optimally. If you use a driver from Realtek or any other laptop makers support site, in spite of having the right driver version, you're going to have horrible static on the speakers after exactly 5 mins. The Alienware laptop was just one example.

Second, you forgot to mention the make and model of your laptop. The only thing we can tell is that you're on a laptop. You also need to mention what OS version you're on at the time of writing. As a side note, you should also check and see if your laptop has any BIOS updates pending.

Lastly, reinstalling Windows would actually much faster than trying to reinstall drivers that might not work for you since it might've ruined your OS by now.

 

[xenthia]

First off, I think you overdid it with the removing spyware from drivers method.

Hi there. Thank you for your attention. Deeply appreciated. I couldn't agree more. Yes, I think I over did it a bit 😀

In fact some of that driver is necessary for the audio to function properly, I can vouch for that since Alienware laptop's need a proprietary driver version in order to work optimally. If you use a driver from Realtek or any other laptop makers support site, in spite of having the right driver version, you're going to have horrible static on the speakers after exactly 5 mins. The Alienware laptop was just one example.

Yes, I have had my hard time with "wrong drivers" some years ago, and I learned my lesson. That is why I always use the official drivers from the provider.

Second, you forgot to mention the make and model of your laptop. The only thing we can tell is that you're on a laptop. You also need to mention what OS version you're on at the time of writing. As a side note, you should also check and see if your laptop has any BIOS updates pending.

Again you are right. I am terribly sorry about that. My laptop is an old one:
Windows 7 Laptops | Affordable Lenovo B50-80 | Lenovo US
And the OS I am using is Windows 10 X64 20H2 (OS Build 19042.1052). And regarding the BIOS update I updated it last like a long time ago and checking here:

laptops and netbooks :: lenovo b series laptops :: lenovo b50 80 notebook Lenovo PC Support - Lenovo Support FR

It says there is no BIOS update available.

Lastly, reinstalling Windows would actually much faster than trying to reinstall drivers that might not work for you since it might've ruined your OS by now.

Yes I get that. As a matter of fact I am on that path, but it is going to take a long time, because like I said I am doing some projects on this laptop, and restoring them is the major problem. And besides, since this is a driver issue and the laptop is working just fine right now (besides the Audio and ACPI), I thought that perhaps someone could help me reset all my drivers and get it to work again.

What I have done so far is that I have removed all the drivers once, all of them and I used windows update with the right setting to download all the drivers again. and it did not work, I again removed all the drivers and this time used the drivers from my laptop's drivers page (link above) and it still did not get the audio back.
I also tried toggling a few registry keys related to audio drivers, and I had to restore them after it didn't work. I also tried clearing up all the files in the drivers folder in system32 folder and copy from a working Windows machine of the same exact version, it didn't work either and I had to restore the files. 😢