Audio crackling after system restore

fried rice

Distinguished
Nov 26, 2010
35
0
18,530
I was forced to perform a system restore today, and I restored to what I had about 6 days ago, when my audio was working fine. Now, everything sounds like crap, with a bunch of electronic crackling on youtube and Windows 7 sounds. I tried to reinstall my motherboard audio drivers, but I'm not sure where to extract the files. I'd appreciate any advice, and I can add any additional details if that would help solve the problem.
 

zaho0006

Distinguished
Jun 27, 2010
50
0
18,640
Depending on your drivers there are two typical ways of doing this. Either you open an .exe file and it asks you where you would like to extract it, in which case you can accept the default location and then follow the instructions from there.

Otherwise if it is a zip file you can right click, go to extract all, click ok. Then go inside of the newly created extracted folder, find the setup exe and run this file, and then follow the installer instructions.
 

fried rice

Distinguished
Nov 26, 2010
35
0
18,530
Well, the plug is definitely in all the way - and I've tried it in both my line out and my case headphone jack. I know it's not my speakers, since I've tried headphones on both my volume control remote and straight from the headphone jack on my case. I tried restoring to an earlier restore point with no change. I found the setup file in my driver extraction and went through that process, but no change.

The only thing that I can think of is that my motherboard's audio controllers were damaged in a power surge, since my power went out this morning. I'd been having other issues (including the launching of startup repair, though I never before had to resort to system restore) before the surge this morning but this audio problem is new and incredibly annoying. I'm thinking that I need to replace my motherboard, since it's got one of the faulty Sandy Bridge chipsets and I've already been experiencing disk drive (SATA port 4) issues anyway. I might try a reformat before then, but I'll probably wind up putting this faulty board in a new lower-end build with a cheap sound card.
 
if it's one of those old boards you should contact the manufacturer. You may be able to get a replacement............ Did you go into the device manager and look for sound device and uninstall the driver ? reboot and see if windows will find it or of windows update will..... if not then use current driver or driver off disc.