Realtek Audio Device/Windows 7

Hello,
I was having a hard time getting my microphone to work. I work from home occasionally and noticed I would have to unplug the jacks and replug them in when I connected to a remote desktop in order for sound to work correctly. Unfortunately, that did not work today. I decided to try updating the Realtek driver. I uninstalled the current driver and installed a more recent one. The driver install asked for a reboot of my system so that it could complete, but once I logged back in, it said the update failed. Now if I look at device manager, it sees an audio device, but lists it as High Definition Audio Device and has the yellow triangle with the exclamation point. I have tried to search for better drivers on my system, but windows says it has the best drivers. Currently I have no sound. Any help would be most helpful.

So I just tried another driver directly from Realtek and windows says it can not verify and do I want to continue. I say yes. The items in the device manager disappear for a moment as if it is trying to do something and then I get the same "windows can't verify the publisher" do you want to continue anyway. So it becomes a loop over and over again.

Alway un-install any software drivers first and reboot... BEFORE installing new... Control Panel/Programs and Features/UNINSTALL

If this is a home built pc, you can also get the drivers from the motherboard manufacturer's web site. Look up your model of board and it should list the drivers for it.

As far as I know, RealTek doesn't make discrete sound cards, so you are using the onboard sound. If this is the case, you should get the realtek drivers from the motherboard manufacturer's web site, not directly from the realtek web site.

If you are using a discrete sound card, go to the sound card manufacturer's web site and download the drivers.

yeah it is onboard. The reason I thought it wasn't is it shows to sound devices in my device manager. I'm not sure the mb that was used. The second one says AMD High Definition device. You'll have to forgive me because I don't go into the BIOS a lot, but it lists the mb there doesn't it or would I have to look in my computer to find it on the mb itself

It should say more than that. it will usually have the make (Asus, Gigabyte, MSI,...) and model, and most times a revision number if there is more than one revision of the board.

For instance, I have a (make) Gigabyte (model) GA-EP45-UD3R (rev#) rev1.1

The side where everything plugs into. here is a pic of my board. Notice the make & model is just above the memory slots, but it could be written anywhere.

The Fc logo is a FCC logo and is on all boards. If you look at the logo, it's a F with a letter C within another letter C, thus FCC.

That's the wrong chip. The realtek chip should say realtek on it along with something like ALC889A. It should be esier to find the make and model of the board and not the chips themselves.

Are you sure one of the PCIe cards, memory, or CPU/fan isn't blocking it?

Go to the driver site for your exact motherboard, then:

1) Download and install the MAIN CHIPSET driver (may say "INF" or something similar)
2) Uninstall anything that looks like audio driver or software
3) Install the driver from the motherboard driver site for AUDIO

If it installed correctly, you may have to change the audio device (graphics cards often have limited audio but we don't want that as the main audio device):

1) right-click the audio icon in the lower-right (System Tray)
2) select "playback devices"
3) "Speakers"

Also, the Realtek software should install with an icon in the System Tray to manage the audio. It's a strange blue icon.

*If you're really stumped, create an Ubuntu CD or DVD then boot to it (no need to install). Once you're on the desktop go to a website and try to play audio. If it works in Linux then it's a software issue with Windows. If it still doesn't work maybe your onboard sound chip is dead?

(I assume it's enabled in the BIOS because you'd said it worked already).

Would a restore point help me fix this by chance or will it not really work on drivers being uninstalled?

You should make an IMAGE of your Windows partition. If you have a Western Digital hard drive (even if its USB and plugged in) you can use their free Acronis True Image software.

You should have a second hard drive, then create an IMAGE (usually about 60% of the size your your Windows drive).

The IMAGE will restore everything, including files, whereas the System Restore doesn't affect files.

I make an IMAGE once per week.