Windows 10: How to force W10 in (re)install a driver from the MS repositiory for W

I have a Toshiba laptop that has a Conexant audio subsystem. The sound system is misbehaving and I suspect a driver issue. Here is the problem: I was running windows 7 and upgraded via the free upgrade offer to Win 10. Everything worked OK for a while and then the problem with the audio system appeared. I checked the Toshiba website and they list no drivers for Win10. I cannot find enough specifics about the Conexant audio system on my laptop to get one from the Conexant website. (if they even have w10 drivers)

My question is: how can I force Windows 10 to download and install a win10 compatible driver for the audio subsystem? Aside from going into the Device Manager and finding the device, how can I find out what driver MS is installing for the Conexant device?
Thanks
J

:)

 

preinstalled win8 or win8.1 to win10 by clean installI

Warning!

You should do upgrade from W 8.1 to W 10 first and then activate W 10. Once you have an activated W10 on pc you can then re-install W10 as clean install.

 

Windows 10 crashed on reinstall

I recently upgraded for free from Windows 7 to Windows 10. Beside a little conflict with my sound card driver everything went well for a couple weeks. Then suddenly I was unable to boot in W10 or if I could get in it froze after a 1 or 2 minutes, forcing
me to manually power off my computer. I tried booting again many times and tried the repair options from the Blue menu that loaded every now and then. I tried to revert to my previous version, W7. I even tried to re-install while keeping my files from the
repair option menu, twice actually. With the result of falling in a infinite boot loop. I finally tried to re-intall completely w/o files conservation, only to have that message of an unknown error that prevented re-install of W10.

Now I'm stuck with my computer with no O/S and this question? Will I be able to re-install W10 and still benefit from the free upgrade? What could be done to re-install W10 on my computer?

 

Hi, rt click properties, Driver in device manager should show the version, and Driver Details more.

If you want to force a complete reinstall, then in device manager, when uninstalling the driver, tick the check box to also delete it. Then reboot.

Downloading from the manufacturer's site carries the usual caveat of it not being fully compatible for laptops, but it has certainly helped me in a couple of instances.

Discussion:
Windows 10 no sound SOLUTION (CONEXANT)

 

My Toshiba laptop has Conexant audio too. The initial free upgrade from Windows 7 to the first RTM Windows 10 (10240) installed MS-supplied Conexant smartaudio HD drivers which initially didn't work without a workaround (run msconfig.exe and under “Boot” – “Advanced Options…” limit your “Maximum memory” to 3072) - apparently a known bug that wasn't fixed in time for the RTM, though it was fixed later in one of the early CUs.

Somewhere along the line, in upgrading to 1511 and now 1607, Windows 10 replaced my Conexant drivers with the generic Microsoft High Definition Audio device which works perfectly.

 

This is what I want to do: force w10 update to install the generic MS HD audio driver. Given that there is no w10 driver by Conexant, and there doesn't seem to be any other correct driver to download, I want to force W10 to install the generic driver you mentioned. Unless someone can tell me where to download this generic driver, then I can manually install it myself. Thanks for your help.

j

 

Which version of Windows 10 do you have? A download shouldn't be needed, HD Audio is supplied as part of Windows 10. There's an hdaudio.inf file in my C:\Windows\INF folder that has a creation date the same as all other files installed when I upgraded to 1607.

Before trying anything, make a Restore Point!

You should be able to manually install HD audio from Device Manager. Look under 'Sound video and games controllers'. You should be able to change the driver for the existing audio device there by clicking its 'update driver' button, selecting 'browse my computer for driver software' and browsing to C:\Windows\INF.

Alternatively, uninstall the existing driver then use Device Manager > Action > Scan for hardware changes.

 

Oh, OK, so it seems you are saying that when W10 was installed, it copied down a generic class HD audio driver, and that should be located in C:\Windows\INF.
TYVM, will check it out!