Windows 8, sound through HDMI but not 3.5mm

[mikeymop]

I have a pair of speakers that plug into the 3.5mm headphone jack on the back of my motherboard. They normally work fine. I was playing a game yesterday, and plugged my headset into the usb port on the back of my mother board and the mic/sound inputs into the front of my speakers.

After the game, I noticed no sound was playing. I switch to HDMI sound output as a troubleshooting step. My monitor accepts sound through HDMI but it's horribly tinny compared to my speakers.

When I open playback devices, the speakers are listed, and are set as default (at the same time as HDMI out). When I try to play a test tone, nothing happens, not even the visual sound indicators move. After a few minutes I'll get a pop up saying 'failed to play test tone' and the playback devices menu will hang.

 

[mikeymop]

I continued trying different things, aside from the standard reboot etc.

I opened device manager, found 'High Definition Audio Device'. I uninstalled the driver and let Windows Update auto detect the driver again. This fixed the problem instantly.