Sound not working. Windows 10 thinks something is plugged into front panel audio jack.

[jbarryengelbrecht]

Issue
After reinstalling windows 10 home edition my system sounds stopped working. I downloaded and installed all my drivers already. I'm using a Gigabyte P67A UD3 motherboard. I notice my system detects something plugged into my front panel audio jack but nothing is actually in there. The volume mixer shows audio playing but there's no sound.

Troubleshooting so far:
-I've tried messing with the settings to disable front panel audio detection and not muting back speakers when headphones are plugged in... Still no sound.
-I've tried plugging in multiple headphones in both front panel jacks (microphone and headphone jack). I've unplugged the speakers which are plugged into the back end motherboard audio jack (tried multiple ports).
-I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling the latest Realtek audio driver and also installing older versions of the audio driver.
-I unplugged the HDA cord from my motherboard, tried swapping it for the AC9 cord, then back to the HDA cord (the HDA plug comes from the front panel of my Antec case).

Any other ideas? I wonder if my front panel audio jack is broken and causing the detection error. However, even when the front panel audio cord is unplugged, windows still detects something plugged into the front panel.

Thanks in advance!

 

[dudio]

Disconnecting the front jack header at the motherboard should have temporarily solved it if the front jack was buggered I would have thought.
Have a very close look then at the header pins on the mothernoard..specifically the pins associated with the two or three related to the front audio jack. Are they shorted out in any way?..something conductive between the pins?..one bent right over?..something under the motherboard at that location shorting it out?
If none of that, I'd guess something weird with software or a physical fault in the motherboard.
Worse case is you get a dedicated soundcard and disable the onboard.

 

[jbarryengelbrecht]

Disconnecting the front jack header at the motherboard should have temporarily solved it if the front jack was buggered I would have thought.
Have a very close look then at the header pins on the mothernoard..specifically the pins associated with the two or three related to the front audio jack. Are they shorted out in any way?..something conductive between the pins?..one bent right over?..something under the motherboard at that location shorting it out?
If none of that, I'd guess something weird with software or a physical fault in the motherboard.
Worse case is you get a dedicated soundcard and disable the onboard.

I thought unplugging the front jack header would have worked also... I don't see any bent pins or something conductive between the pins. The sound worked fine before the new windows install (I had to do a clean windows install after replacing the GPU and windows wouldn't boot all the way). I'll try doing another clean windows install and see if that resolves it. Thanks for your response!

 

[dudio]

Good luck!
List all your hardware if you need more help.
Also, you may want to do a BIOS update and subsequent reinstall of audio drivers to rule that out. I'm reading some posts suggesting slightly older motherboards requiring it with newer gen GPU's, and who knows if that freaks out the sound drivers.

 

[jbarryengelbrecht]

I updated the bios, did another clean install of windows, redownloaded and installed all the drivers, updated windows and my pc will still not output any form of sound. Realtek sound settings still show headphones plugged in when there are not... I’m at a loss of what to try next.

Should I start replacing components? New case? New motherboard?
Current system specs:
Antec three hundred case
Gigabyte p67a -ud3 motherboard
I5-2500k cpu
Gigabyte Radeon 6850 vga series gpu
Corsair xms ram

 

[dudio]

Very tempted to believe (based on what you have tried) that there is a fault with the motherboard.
I think the cheapest solution is to get a dedicated soundcard and disable the onnoard. If you need to run both speakers and a headset at the same time, you can get a 3.5mm stereo male to two 3.5 stereo female splitter and run speakers and headset off the one audio output.

 

[jbarryengelbrecht]

I think you’re right. It must be a motherboard issue. I had the same problem when I built the computer 8 years ago. I don’t remember how I got it resolved back then. But after taking out the cmos battery and reinstalling everything this time around we’re back to no sound.

I’ll go buy a new sound card at Best Buy today. If that doesn’t work, I’ll buy a new motherboard, cpu, and ram.