Sound card stopped working after the anniversary update

[jonte986]

Tomshardware hasn't failed me so far so let's give it a shot.

I have a Xonar U7 that has been acting weird lately. Sometimes when I start my PC the sound card doesn't turn on, but I could fix this before by removing and plugging in the USB cable again. However, since I installed windows anniversary update, windows can't even recognise the device (unknown device, port reset failed, etc).

Here's a conversation between me and Asus Tech support:

I think I have driver issues with W10. At first, the card didn't want to start but I could fix it by removing and plugging in the USB but today it shut off completely (windows couldn't recognise the device). I removed the USB port drivers and reinstalled them and now the card works but the Xonar Audio Center and the dolby software does not work (it can't find any device). I tried reinstalling but it still can't find any device. The Xonar U7 shows up as "USB digital audio device" in the device manager, and not as "Xonar U7". I don't know what caused it (it worked fine until last week) but if you have a fix, I would really appreciate it.

Their reply:
Dear ASUS Valued Customers,
Hi
The issue is likely to be caused by the anniversary edition update for w10 and currently we have no fix for this issue.

The card isn't broken because, as I said in the mail, if I uninstall all drivers and restart my PC, the sound works for the moment. I wouldn't be making this thread if the card was broken, I'd just buy a new one but it feels weird to do that knowing that it's just driver issues :S

Do you guys have any experience with this?

Thanks

Oh and I tried talking to Microsofts answer desk via live chat but the queue time was stuck on 1 min for a long time

 

[Dynomite54]

Go to device manager and make sure all of sound drivers are uninstalled and then try reinstalling them.

 

[geofelt]

Can you use system restore to reset your pc to a point before the anniversary update?

Can you download the drivers directly from asus and try to reinstall them?

 

[yobdab]

I have this exact same problem.

All drivers are pitch perfect. I have to reinstall everytime I turn my pc on.
Its as if Windows forgets it has sound drivers installed.

 

[jonte986]

Go to device manager and make sure all of sound drivers are uninstalled and then try reinstalling them.

Here's what I just did:
Opened up devmgr and uninstalled the audio drivers, then unplug the audio card, then uninstall xonar audio center + dolby, restart, install xonar audio center and then plug the card in. The card turns on but gets recognised as Digital Audio Device and not Xonar U7 like it did before. And when I install the Xonar U7 software, it says "Could not open the dolby audio driver, restart the PC or reinstall the drivers if the problem persists", and this message pops up when I start my PC. And I probably mentioned it before but when I open the U7 software it says "Can't find any device".

It's as if windows doesn't care that there's other drivers installed, they just go with that generic "Digital Audio Device" stuff. I wonder what happens if I install older drivers.

Can you use system restore to reset your pc to a point before the anniversary update?

Can you download the drivers directly from asus and try to reinstall them?

Unfortunately I don't have any system restore points :/
The drivers are from asus support page. There are only 2 versions available for windows 10 and I think I have tried them both. If I remember correctly though, I used to use the drivers for windows 8 when windows 10 was relatively new and newer drivers didn't exist. I might try those.

I have this exact same problem.

All drivers are pitch perfect. I have to reinstall everytime I turn my pc on.
Its as if Windows forgets it has sound drivers installed.

Yeah, it either "forgets" or it just doesn't care and ends up using its own drivers

Edit: OR I could just uninstall the update, what do you guys think?

Edit #2: Okay so the one update that I could not uninstall was the KB3176936 and that update was the only one that was installed on 2016-10-02 and that was when my audio card stopped working so I suspect that this is the update you should avoid. (Unless you count the visual C++ updates but I don't think it's them)

 

[jonte986]

Ayy good news guys. I tried the drivers for Windows 8 64-bit and lo and behold it worked. The card gets recognised as a Xonar U7 and the Dolby Home Theatre software is working aswell. The old audio center looks better imo. Anyways thanks for help guys and please share this to people with similar problems. I just hope it won't break.. 😀