Windows 7 Computer cant find sound hardware (speakers)

[Samuel V]

hey, so I'm finding a lot of stuff on google about no sound coming from speakers, but nothing about speakers not being seen, so pretty much this is what happened. Two days ago, speakers worked perfect, I was actually using my turtle beaches in place of my speakers cause it was late, and didn't have the stuff plugged in to the front of my computer for them to be used there. anyway they worked, then I went to bed, worked the next day, came home to use my computer, speakers didnt work, what do you know, the computer see's something that i dont have. It says I have Digital Audio (S/PDIF) plugged in and active, but i dont even have one of those ports, and when I plug in speakers/mic nothing happens. I'm not even close to new with computers, but cant find this anywhere.. anyone else have this kind of problem?

Things i've tried/arnt it:

• I have all the newest drivers
• its not the speakers, computer doesnt see anything at all
• tried all sound out ports, doesnt see anything

thanks in advance

 

[stueycaster]

Did you try System Restore?

 

[Samuel V]

I cant because before that the system restore was somehow turned off, not sure how it happened, but anyway, no restore points were created

 

[stueycaster]

By "speakers not being seen" you mean that you right click the speaker icon in the system tray and click "Playback devices" and they're not there, right? Did you uninstall the sound card drivers in "Device Manager" then restart the computer to allow it to reinstall the drivers?

Also, if something had switched off "System Restore" without my knowledge I'd be really concerned about a virus.

 

[Samuel V]

I may have turned it off, but i'm pretty possitive i dont have a virus haha, I've never had one, i'm careful

 

[Saltgrass]

Any chance you accepted an update that loaded some type of driver for the alternate system?

Do you have any type of mixer/control panel for something like Realtek or just the Win 7 mixer? I assume you have the speakers plugged in now, but they do not show up in the playback devices.

Before it stopped working, was the system sleeping/hibernating, or did you do a cold boot?

 

[Samuel V]

Possibly sleeping, although I'm not sure, A while back I was doing stuff that required me to make sure that it didnt sleep/hibernate so I was pretty sure that was shut off, but I cant remember for sure if I turned it back on or not.. Either way, I had been using Realtek, but not since windows7 I just started using realtek on windows 7 once the computer was unable to find my speakers, just to hopefully figure out what was going on. Although it didnt work, I havn't uninstalled it. and alternate system?

 

[Mike]

I have seen this problem before with Realtek audio drivers. Remove these custom drivers, and all ports may be detected once again. If that happens, try re-installing the drivers. To this date, I have no idea why exactly this happens. I am using Realtek High Definition Audio Driver 5/14/2010 6.0.1.6074 and all is working fine with regular cables. I'm suspecting it could even be a motherboard issue. Can we get some info on your hardware?

 

[Samuel V]

Possibly sleeping, although I'm not sure, A while back I was doing stuff that required me to make sure that it didnt sleep/hibernate so I was pretty sure that was shut off, but I cant remember for sure if I turned it back on or not.. Either way, I had been using Realtek, but not since windows7 I just started using realtek on windows 7 once the computer was unable to find my speakers, just to hopefully figure out what was going on. Although it didnt work, I havn't uninstalled it. and alternate system?

I'm pretty sure thats not it.. And i would give you specs, although that specific computer is at my mothers house, I happen to be on my laptop. It was a gateway, Yeah its a few years old, but I dont understand why this is happening.. and I'm waiting to build a custom computer but this needs to work for now, sound would be nice. I dont understand why its finding something that ISNT there in the first place. , Its finding the one thats like an RCA cable, but wont find 3.5mm ports..

 

[Mike]

I don't want to be the bearer of bad news in this instance, but in all instances I have had this issue, the only time it disappeared was 1. Uninstalling the Realtek drivers 2. Use a different motherboard and for some reason it never appears again 3. Reinstall Windows

Not a clue why it happens in my instance, but if its Realtek, I wouldn't be surprised you are experiencing this problem. I do believe mine went away incidentally when switching out motherboards. Of course it could be something more simple like audio jack plugged into the wrong port, but I bet you've excluded that.

I've definitely seen it before, but it was never solved on that machine until I accidentally killed the motherboard and had it replaced. It could be a software conflict, or device driver conflict, but now we are talking about massive process of elimination to find out what that would be.

Any custom hardware that would interact with the card and drivers? Software that is on in the background or resident in memory, along with drivers could be the culprit. I am making the assumption this is a integrated Realtek soundcard. There have been many posts on the forums about this, yet no solution.