Is my on-board sound care broken or corrupted?

[saadieman]

Hey all, I was playing a game last saturday(PUBG) and my PC froze and my GPU crashed. I restarted it, without the GPU plugged in, and found that my sound was not working anymore... The speaker icon in the bottom right corner of my toolbar said something along the lines of "There is no audio controller installed".

When I opened device manager I found that there was a yellow exclamation mark on the High Definition Audio Controller, and the sound video and game controller tab was missing.

I tried a lot of things to fix this but nothing helped.

I started off by installing the sounddrivers again, first by removing them and then ordering Windows to install them and afterwards manually through the AsRock site.

I also tried editing the registry, both in normal mode and in safe mode.

I tried a BIOS/UEFI update and then disabling onboard audio, saving, rebooting and enabling them again.

I also checked whether the audioservices were started/running and whether they were set on automatic, they always were.

As a last resort I completely wiped my pc and downloaded Windows 10. This time also with a new GPU, the error I'm getting now is that there is no headphones or speakers plugged in. But I'm 100% sure he says this because he's looking at the NVIDIA controller in the PCI bus 1 which refers to the HDMI outputs of my GPU(I don't have a monitor with sound so this will also not work).

When I open Device Manager I'm seeing 2 High Definition Audio Controllers within the system devices tab. One in PCI 1 and the other in PCI 0 device 27. The former is working as intended(according to Windows), the latter has the yellow exclamation mark and it says "This device cannot start (code 10)". I'm honestly lost, should I just buy a sound card or is there still hope left?

My specifications:

OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
CPU: i5-4460
Mobo: AsRock B85M-HDS
PSU: Seasonic 620W Modular
Ex-GPU: Radeon 280X
GPU: MSI GTX 1080

 

[ohiou_grad_2006]

Sounds like you've covered all the bases. The good news is should cards don't run to much depending what you're getting. You can spend as little as 10 bucks to hundreds depending how advanced you want to go. If you can find a sound card for a reasonable price that had creative's xfi or Xfinity technology, you'll probably feel like it sounds better than the onboard sound anyway.

But after all the troubleshooting, I think I'd just drop a should card in. With the age of that system, if you were to try to replace the board, you'd be dumping at least say 50-60 bucks into an older platform you will probably upgrade in a year or 2 anyway.

If you've got a free slot and are just wanting a cheap fix, maybe something looked this would do the job.


https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B010B717L2/ref=mp_s_a_1_39?ie=UTF8&qid=1506167292&sr=8-39&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=sound+card

 

[saadieman]

Hey man, thanks for the reply. Yeah that's exactly what I was afraid for. And you're right, a new mobo wouldnt be worth it at all. Anyway, I'm like a total 0 when it comes down to sound cards haha, is it just like a video card; plug-in, install drivers and you're ready to go? If so, I'm using a HyperX Cloud 1 right now. I don't know how well it performs when it's combined with a sound card, can you share some knowledge (an article or vid on youtube which I should watch will do too!).

The Sound Card I'm eying now is the Asus Xonar DGX, purely because it's ~kinda cheap and available within 1 day here(The Netherlands). You know anything about it or nothing at all?

Sorry for all these questions btw ;D

 

[ohiou_grad_2006]

I don't know much about that particular one, but newegg.com user reviews people rate it 4 out of 5 eggs out of 130 reviews. So if you can get a good price it seems like it's worth a shot.

Might search YouTube just to see if you can find anything there. But as long as you have a slot it can fit into, you just plug it in there, if Windows does not automatically install drivers for it then you need to install drivers and it should work. Also, most sounds cards have a connection where you can plug the front panel audio plug so that your front headphones etc work.

Not sure on the hyper x cloud, never used that headset but it should just plug into the audio plug on the card and work, probably will sound better than the onboard sound.