Headset not detected

[NyuTrustan]

Hi,

I've been using my homebuilt PC for about a month now with no real issues. Today for an unknown reason my headset (Fatality, Creative) which has been working perfectly is no longer detected. I have tried the following:

Uninstalled and reinstalled audio drivers.
Uninstalled and tried (supposedly 3.5mm jack ports run regardless of drivers).
Messed about with settings via Realtek audio manager.
Unplugged and reattached the HDAudio connector to the motherboard.
Tested the headset in the front ports, no difference.

The headset does work in other devices.

Nothing has worked so far and I'm pretty stuck. Having uninstalled the realtek drivers I am left with 'Digital Audio (S/PDIF)' as my only sound output option. Disabling this has no effect. When the drivers were installed a similar option (with a different name was present) but it had exactly the same effect.

Any ideas?

 

[the great randini]

what is the model?
i would unplug it, open device manager and uninstall.
plug it back in, if windows does not plug and play install it. down load the latest driver from Fatality, Creative and reinstall.

 

[weaselman]

Oh dear, it has to do with the way the windows sound panel works my friend.
Right click on the speaker icon next to the time in windows. Select playback devices.
In there you should see Speakers for example, it should be set at default audio device.
You should also at least see a reference to a Headset in the playback options of windows sound manager. If so all you have to do is right click on the headphones and set them as the default device to get them working.
You can also set the headphones up as a default communications device by doing the same thing, right click on the headset and select that option.
If you intend to use the Mic you will have to also go into the Record options and right click on one of the Mic`s shown and select that as a default device, or enable device. You may have two Mic`s in there it depends but setting one or the other to default will get it working.

 

[NyuTrustan]

what is the model?
i would unplug it, open device manager and uninstall.
plug it back in, if windows does not plug and play install it. down load the latest driver from Fatality, Creative and reinstall.

Hi and thanks for the response. Unfortunately I have tried uninstalling the drivers, reinstalling using windows standard search, reinstalling via the Mobo website (ASrock Z77 Extreme4 pro btw) and then just uninstalling all drivers.

I did as you said but as far as I can tell there are no specific drivers via Creative. The specific model is 'Fatal1ty' Gaming Headset.
Still no solve sadly.

Oh dear, it has to do with the way the windows sound panel works my friend.
Right click on the speaker icon next to the time in windows. Select playback devices.
In there you should see Speakers for example, it should be set at default audio device.
You should also at least see a reference to a Headset in the playback options of windows sound manager. If so all you have to do is right click on the headphones and set them as the default device to get them working.
You can also set the headphones up as a default communications device by doing the same thing, right click on the headset and select that option.
If you intend to use the Mic you will have to also go into the Record options and right click on one of the Mic`s shown and select that as a default device, or enable device. You may have two Mic`s in there it depends but setting one or the other to default will get it working.

Cheers for the response but sadly this is not an option. As the headset is not being detected in the first place there is no option to make it the default device. There is no detection of the headset regardless of what ports are used (front/back/keyboard).

 

[HEXiT]

remove the headset from the jacks and reboot the pc... 1s it starts up plug in the jacks 1 at a time. ears first then mic... you should get a popup asking which outputs to set them as, select front speakers. for the ears and mic as standard.
i prefer to use the green for the speakers and pink for the mic.
if you dont get a pop up then you may want to go into the control pannel and click on the speech recognition tab. then select setup mic. this should then detect your headset again. just follow the steps in the wizard till it completes and your kit should then work...
reason for this is occasionaly the registry can loose some settings so reseting them up will often correct any reg erros... if the errors persist then check for malware.
have you also re installed the realtech audio... if you did make sure you run a reg cleaner b4 you install it again or you could end up running into the same error if the reg keys arnt deleted and renewed.
ccleaner will do the job.

 

[NyuTrustan]

Thanks for the reply HEXiT but sadly this has not worked. No alerts or pop-ups occur when plugging the jacks in and under speech recognition it tells me that no audio input devices are available.

It has worked in the past, it just seems to have stopped working randomly as of two days ago. This does coincide with he removal of my video card (RMA for coil whine) but I don't see why that would have affected it.
Full AV scan done for malware, nothing.

 

[weaselman]

Let me guess, was it by chance an ATI card ? Smirks if it was.

 

[weaselman]

Did we uninstall the Ati driver with its HDMI audio ?

 

[NyuTrustan]

Let me guess, was it by chance an ATI card ? Smirks if it was.

Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 OC Vapor-X was my video card.

Did we uninstall the Ati driver with its HDMI audio ?

I uninstalled the video card via device manager and had assumed that would do the trick, I am likely wrong.


Update: Went into BIOS settings to check integrated sound card was enabled (did not find this option sadly), however while looking for that I found an interactive plan for my MoBo. When clicking on the 5 jacks section at the back it tells me that they are disconnected. Any ideas on how to reconnect them? I have not touched anything hardware wise except removing my video card.

 

[weaselman]

Well I do know it installs a Hdmi audio driver at some point, dpending on the card, if its a new model, it could be causing the conflict, because when you think about it the audio went fritz on the headset. so a bit of logic if you think about it sort of says or should I say points to the problem. Btw the Jack should be auto sensing so it will only show if a jack is plugged in at the time. I have a sneaky suspicion if what you say is right after removing the graphics card, the headpohones stopped working don`t you think ?

 

[NyuTrustan]

Fair point. Any ideas on where I would find the drivers to remove them? (I think I have already, but just incase). The jacks themselves show as 'disconnected' at present rather than empty. So I don't think they are even auto-sensing.

 

[weaselman]

Have a check here it tells you how to clean all of the drivers from ATI out of the system, just in case it is the cause. Read the lower section of the web page as you have already done the first step.

http://www.brightsideofnews.com/news/2012/4/4/guide-how-to-completely-uninstall-amd-graphics-drivers.aspx

Or give driver sweeper a try to remove any left over Ati files. let me know if you have any luck.

 

[NyuTrustan]

Thanks for the ideas, tried both but sadly no solve, same situation.

 

[NyuTrustan]

Update:
The front jacks are also showing as 'disconnected' rather than 'empty' on BIOS, so I am fairly certain this is the issue. Does anyone know how to reconnect them?

 

[rateb]

hey, you have disabled your device and that's why you can't find it anymore

just to go playback tap, right click on the empty space and mark " show disabled devices"

you will find your device in gray as it's disabled, right click on it and then enable it

 

[HEXiT]

+1 above.

 

[NyuTrustan]

Thanks but that wasn't it, MoBo failure was the cause. I have since RMT'd the MoBo and everything is fine now.

 

[HEXiT]

sorry to hear that... glad its fixed though...

 

[tiiagoFernandez]

I know it hugely late, but i got this issue myself. It has nothing to do with drivers itself its a problem with windows/firewall/antivirus.
The headphone detection only works if an app is running at background, if its not it wont detect. I fixed this myself with a little research on Creative exe processes. Go to Windows folder, System32 and you will find an app called CTXFIHLP (for x-fi users) or CTHLP (for older creative); double click and the detection will work again! To do a permanent solution just add that app to boot, via Software or via Windows Boot folder. I used Glary Utilities to do this.

Hope i could help.

 

[HEXiT]

ah! creative drivers, always giving problems even on well tested hardware... i dunno how they manage it but every other driver seems to wreck system stability...

i have the Xtreme gamer and found that i had to downgrade my drivers just to get the card to boot and be seen in my system.

 

[tiiagoFernandez]

I have a Platinum Champium and have to downgrade too because theses new drivers change my output to S/PDIF when i have a game open.. So i hear game sound from Analog and other sounds (chrome; skype; etc) output themselves to SPDIF .. x.x

So strange, but i'll guess ill have to go with drivers of 2009 (stable)

 

[NyuTrustan]

Would you believe that 2 years on I have exactly the same problem...

I've just upgraded to a 970 G1 (video card) and I have EXACTLY the same issues as above. TiagoF's solution did not work, but this time round I have circumvented the issue by buying a cheap sound card (USB though I doubt it matters). It works now, means I can delay an upgrade a while longer!

 

[rosenbaum]

Would you believe that 2 years on I have exactly the same problem...

I've just upgraded to a 970 G1 (video card) and I have EXACTLY the same issues as above. TiagoF's solution did not work, but this time round I have circumvented the issue by buying a cheap sound card (USB though I doubt it matters). It works now, means I can delay an upgrade a while longer!

I have the same problem which realtek can't detect my headphone while the default audio settings of windows 8 detects my headphone but unclickable to use.

Now I have figured it out that Realtek HD audio manager has this back panel and front panel settings (you can see it at the right side of the manager). The Back Panel is for Stereo, Quadraphonic, 5.1 and 7.1 speakers. The Front panel is for the headphone and microphone which you can notice the icon plugs it represents on the right side (ANALOG) of the Realtek Audio HD Manager (e.i Back Panel: the 6 plugs, Front Panel: 2 plugs --> color pink and green)

What I did was I clicked the Connector Settings and put a check on the disable front panel jack detection and was able to use the headphone and when I want to use the speakers again I just uncheck the disable front panel jack detection.

Hope this will help others who has the same problem as mine

Note: Sorry for my bad english, it's not my language