Windows 10: No sound, problem using my speakers like normal. PC forcing me to use a digital output I...

I have never had a problem like this.

So frustrating. I'm not a complete noob, but this stumped me. From what I've read I am far from being the only one who has encountered this problem. One day everything is working fine, turn off PC. Next day, turn on PC, and all of a sardine my PC thinks I don't need a regular speaker output because it want's me to magically use a digital output I don't have!

Started my computer and encountered the following:

No sound, could not see 'Speakers', only S/PDIF, in sound settings.
Speaker output not working, visible in sound option, but didn't register the speakers being plugged in. My headphones didn't work either.
Windows troubleshoot didn't work. Trying different/updated drivers didn't work.
I've always used the on-board sound, but I did try a sound-card I have lying around, and that also did not work.
I last updated Windows a month ago, so I don't think that that is a problem. I updated the drivers and all it did was change the 'S/PDIF' in volume controller to 'Realtek Digital Output'.

What did kind of work was uninstalling all sound drivers and then re-installing with the older Realtek driver, R281 a suggestion from a forum, but it didn't work all on it's own. It still only showed Realtek Digital Output. I had to manually open Realtek from Program Files, because it wasn't listed in Control Panel, and then, it only registered my speakers after I unplugged them and plugged them back in. But I could only choose 'Headphones' from the plug and play feature, there was no 'Speakers' option. So, my sound is working, but I think this is more like a band-aid than a proper solution.

And besides all of this I don't even have a digital output/hdmi, so why does it only want to give me that option? Why did I have to force it to accept that I have speakers even if it thinks they're headphones?

Ultimately, is there a fix, a better way, to make my speakers work like they used to?


My computer is old:

Processor: Pentium Dual-Core E5300 @ 2.60GHZ

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-G31M-ES2C

Ram: 4GB

Windows 10 Pro
Version: 20H2
OZ Build: 19042.844
Experience: Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.5510

:)

 

My speakers are not listed as a sound output device, how do I make it my default sound output device? Problem arose after I did a pc reset operation.

This problem all started right after I did this pc reset operation. The funny thing is that after doing this operation it fixed this mail issue problem I had for a very long time but then this current problem is now the issue. When I go to the settings page
for sound, I see that my magic jack internet phone handset is the default output device for sound. And when I play back music from Windows Media Player I need to hear it using my phone handset. So how do I get my speakers as the default output device for sound?
As I already mentioned my speakers are not even listed as an output device, it's like it got deleted. So I would appreciate some expert help here.

Thanks,

 

Problem outputting 5.1 surround sound from PC via HDMI

Yeah, this is something I haven't managed to figure out, either.

In any event, I *think* I found a solution to the issue - and it was NOT easy! - so for the benefit of anyone googling this in the future, here's my postmortem.

- I got tired of figuring out whether my HP PC was hardware-capable of outputting 5.1, even though I still don't understand what additional hardware capabilities should be necessary in a machine with an HDMI output. So I bought a new Acer PC that had 5.1
capability plastered all over the description. (It was something I was considering anyway)

- The new PC nonetheless exhibited the same exact issue - only outputting stereo sound and only giving the option to output stereo sound.

- Several sites suggested that the "Realtek HD Audio Manager" was an essential device for HD/5.1 sound output and this was absent from the device manager. So I had to download this and reinstall it.

- Enabling HD/5.1 output required messing with the settings in MULTIPLE places - both the control panel and device manager, including in sub-menus buried within sub-menus. Nonetheless, many hours later, 5.1 output appeared in the pulldown options! MIRACLE!

- We weren't home yet. Despite enabling the 5.1 output, the speaker test would only output sound from the front two speakers. (This was different from the way the speaker test failed off the prior PC, where it outputted sound from the surround speakers but
the rear sound output was the same as the front sound output.) This suggested to me that the issue at this point was hardware, not software... but WHAT hardware??!

- The culprit was the audio out. I had misremembered the TV→receiver connection. It was a digital optical cable, not an HDMI. And it turns out that digital optical cables do not, in fact, reproduce
the exact digital stream they take in - they are bandwidth limited and supposedly cannot be used for 5.1 surround sound or even (according to some sites I saw - I cannot independently verify this) 24bit/96khz stereo. The mystery of how I was nonetheless previously
able to get surround-sound output from Xbox→HDMI→TV→[optical]→receiver→speakers
remains unsolved.

- I rewired the cables so instead of going PC→HDMI→TV→[optical]→receiver→speakers,
I now have one HDMI going from PC→TV and a second HDMI going from PC →receiver. Finally we got working 5.1 output through the speaker
test and Foobar2000!! This, I think, is as good as it will get. Unfortunately it's not an ideal solution because having all audio output come through the TV to the receiver enabled me to switch back and forth from PC, to TV, to Xbox as many times as I wanted,
and the audio would come through the receiver without having to do anything else. Now, I have to switch the dial for the audio source on the receiver every time I switch the audio source feeding to the TV, which is annoying and really should be unnecessary
in the year 2020, but there is no digital audio output from the TV besides the (apparently unusable) optical.

Thanks very much to everybody who tried to help. I hope this post helps someone else out there eventually. Many unanswered questions remain but at least I can listen to Dark Side of the Moon in surround sound.

 

Windows 10 audio stutters regardless of driver or output used, more noticeable on the toslink and surround sound.

• What device are you using? A laptop or a computer?
• Its a desktop, i listed the components in the original post.
• Do you have an external speaker?From which device does the sound come out from? From the TV or from the device?
• I listed the outputs in the original post. The issue exists on all outputs and exists on the tv speakers, surround sound speakers, and headset.
• What other troubleshooting steps have you tried so far?
• I have listed the troubleshooting steps that i can remember in the original post.