First off a bit of back ground, I work in an I.T department and i first came across the issues i am about to explain last year and as it was only effecting a couple of computers we decided to let it lie as it was effecting us too much. The problem we are facing is that we currently have no Audio on a selection of Windows 7 Professional x86/x64 setup's the machines vary quite a bit so there is no real common ground on the board manufacturer or sound card manufacturer etc. I am "lucky" enough to have my desktop work machine as one with the problem so I have been able to try many fixes on mine to start with without interrupting work. I am also not to bothered as i don't tend to have thing that requires audio on my pc. The symptoms are as follows: Device manager is fine the audio cards/on board sound showing as installed with no conflicts or errors. On the desktop the audio icon in the notification bar shows with a red circle with white x through it and when hovered over presents "no Audio output device installed" When clicking on the above icon it tries to fix the issues but ends up with the conclusion that "Audio Device is disabled" What i have tried: Downloaded the correct drivers for the sound cards along with adding a PCI card and installing the drivers for this from Disc and Website install this results in same problem. Uninstalled all traces on the drivers and disabled it on board and restarted then rebooted again enabled and reinstalled with various drive combinations with no joy. I have done this both on the on board and PCI card variations if sound cards. Checked audio services are running and they are so have restarted them but this makes no difference to any of the setups. Disabled and re-enabled the cards with no effect. Used windows 7 update/install driver function to install everything once all is uninstalled with no effect. There are some other ones i think but i cant think of them off the top of my head at the moment. Extra info: All machines are running either windows 7 64 or 32 bit professional versions some identical machines (hardware wise) are working fine and some are not. The only thing i know might work is a format and reinstall however i refuse to do this on a couple of the machines as i really don’t see this has a solution and it would be disruptive to the users work flow. Also it worked on my machine originally and i suspect it could be a windows update that caused it however i am going to have to test that at some point begging of next year as i don’t have the time to sit and do this! Many Thanks for any help you can offer, Tom

Which sound card do you use?"A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code" CLIP- Stellvertreter http://www.winvistaside.de/

The Majority of the onboard cards including mine seem to be Realtek HD based and the PCI one i currently have is a C-Media one.

My motherboard also uses a Realtek HD chip and it works fine. Download the latest drivers: http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=24&PFid=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false Are the 2 audio services from Windows running (Audio Endpoint mapper and Windows Audio)? André"A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code" CLIP- Stellvertreter http://www.winvistaside.de/

Unfortunately i have tried both these things.

Carried on Testing various things and discovered something odd. If i open the C-Media Audio Configuration tool that came with the PCI sound card drivers and use the tool for testing left and right speaker i do get the test audio that comes out of the left and right speakers. However nothing windows bases e.g. media player/media centre and i tried Winamp all come up stating there is no audio device to use. Doing a dxdiag shows up an initial error stating "Error: Problem getting extra sound info" however once ok is pressed and sound tab checked it shows as no problems found. Other things worth mentioning are these machines are all on a Domain with a group policy applied however the one i am working on is currently no inheriting anything. Tom

Please boot into Clean Boot Mode. Perform a clean startup to determine whether background programs are interfering with your game or program In Clean Boot Mode, reinstall the audio driver.Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Thanks for that advice it was one thing i had not actually tried! However it still has not solved the problem.

Do you have a PCI soundcard which you can insert? Does this card work?"A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code" CLIP- Stellvertreter http://www.winvistaside.de/

What i have tried: Downloaded the correct drivers for the sound cards along with adding a PCI card and installing the drivers for this from Disc and Website install this results in same problem.

Are the Windows Audio services (Windows Audio and Audio Endpoint Mapper) running?"A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code" CLIP- Stellvertreter http://www.winvistaside.de/

What i have tried: Downloaded the correct drivers for the sound cards along with adding a PCI card and installing the drivers for this from Disc and Website install this results in same problem. Uninstalled all traces on the drivers and disabled it on board and restarted then rebooted again enabled and reinstalled with various drive combinations with no joy. I have done this both on the on board and PCI card variations if sound cards. Checked audio services are running and they are so have restarted them but this makes no difference to any of the setups. Disabled and re-enabled the cards with no effect. Used windows 7 update/install driver function to install everything once all is uninstalled with no effect. There are some other ones i think but i cant think of them off the top of my head at the moment.

I have no idea left. Contact the MS support directly. They should escalate this in detail. "A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code" CLIP- Stellvertreter http://www.winvistaside.de/

well, if you have a PCI card in the slot and runing x64bit OS then the card couldn`t work `couse PCI is 32bit interface. You didn`t say nothing about this... I wonder...??? Very strange behavior...did you check your BIOS settings...? (sound ......if it`s integrated)

the 32Bit is the PCI bus, there was a server version of the PCI Bus which was 64Bit, but this has nothing to do with 32 or 64Bit Windows: "A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code" CLIP- Stellvertreter http://www.winvistaside.de/

Did you go into Control panel > Sound> Playback tab? What do you see? Are the speakers set as the default device? Jerry

yeah Andre..what I mean is that PCI cards are not recognised in x64 OS-s. I`ve got a PCI TV card and it works in 32bit enviroment but when 32 bit OS is installed the card is not visible.

this has nothing do with32 or 64Bit. Do you see the PCI card in the device manager? Which card is it? Does it have 64Bit drivers?"A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code" CLIP- Stellvertreter http://www.winvistaside.de/

The symptoms are as follows: Device manager is fine the audio cards/on board sound showing as installed with no conflicts or errors. On the desktop the audio icon in the notification bar shows with a red circle with white x through it and when hovered over presents "no Audio output device installed" When clicking on the above icon it tries to fix the issues but ends up with the conclusion that "Audio Device is disabled" What i have tried: … Similiar symptoms suddenly strike on my PC too (W7Pro x64 // Creative SB X-Fi Titanium PCI-E, USB Plantronics Headset, onboard VIA VT1828S). Now is all OK. My solution: Download and install KB975538. Restart. When problem remains… Open registry editor, find HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\MMDevices\Audio, set Ownership for all subtree to some sensible account, then set similarly Permissions to Read. …and without restart audio WORKS :-)

thanks for the hotfix. @Tom try this please."A programmer is just a tool which converts caffeine into code" CLIP- Stellvertreter http://www.winvistaside.de/

Came back to this thread as i still have problems and now a few more computers have had the same issue. I tried the last one on this list however the Fix does not apply to any of the computers with the issue and the permissions/ownership fix did not work. Thanks, Tom