No sound after Windows10 upgrade. Help, please?

April 7, 2016 3:17 PM

After its upgrade to Windows 10, my desktop no longer has sound. I had 8.1 until this afternoon, and had sound from the computer, NOT through additional speakers. Is it possible to restore this sound functionality under the new system?

I have an HP all-in-one desktop that is frustrating the bejesus out of me. I was finally able to install Windows 10 this afternoon after many tries, only to find that the new system has no sound. Until the upgrade, I was getting sound out of the computer without any problem--that is, I had an acceptable level of sound without having installed external speakers. I DO NOT WANT to add speakers; I don't really have room for them. I DO want my sound back. Is this possible in 10, and if so, how? Looks like this might be a known problem? I tried the first solution here, and...bupkis. Help? (Simple explanations welcome. I am not computer proficient when it comes to complicated fixes.)

posted by MonkeyToes to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

i had what might be the same problem - the windows volume doodah was controlling one sound device, but i was actually listening to a different one (which wasn't visible in the volume control).

what i did was go to configuration (i am translating from spanish here - the windows 10 thing that has a bunch of settings in, a link from the big "startup menu" thing), enter "sound" in the search bar, click on the first result, which had my sound devices, select the device i wanted to adjust, click "properties", select the "levels" tab, and adjust the volume there.
posted by andrewcooke at 4:03 PM on April 7, 2016

This is a known problem. In fact, my HP all-in-one came with Windows 10, but the update consistently wrecks the sound, and no proposed solution has worked; I keep rolling back the update every blasted time. To my knowledge, Microsoft has yet to propose a patch or do anything, you know, useful.
posted by thomas j wise at 5:09 PM on April 7, 2016

Yeah, it could be simply that the correct device is not selected, as I believe andrewcooke is implying. You may also have to right click on the desired sound device from the sound settings menu and click "set as default device"

Also, downloading drivers from HP for your computer may fix the problem.

Using the windows 10 default sound driver may also help, as described here
posted by mosschief at 5:11 PM on April 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sorry I can't help, but you have helped me by giving me another reason to not upgrade to Win10.
posted by charlesminus at 6:19 PM on April 7, 2016 [1 favorite]

When I upgraded to Windows 10 on my old laptop, Bluetooth suddenly stopped working. It turned out the proprietary Intel Windows 8 Bluetooth app held over was conflicting with Windows Bluetooth support. It refused to work until the drivers and app were uninstalled, at which point Windows' built-in support worked fine.

I mention this to lend support to mosschief's suggestion, of removing proprietary drivers and letting Windows 10's innate support take charge, or at least letting it search for and install its own favored drivers from Microsoft's servers. Worth a shot?
posted by JHarris at 12:23 AM on April 8, 2016

Response by poster: And Firefox's "Open in New Tab" functionality seems to have gone as well! thomas j wise, that rollback may be a last resort...
posted by MonkeyToes at 4:46 AM on April 8, 2016

Firefox opening up sites in new tabs is probably something unconnected with Windows 10. Try restarting your machine and see if the ability returns? Or alternatively, make sure you're actually running Firefox and now that Edge thing Microsoft is trying to push?
posted by JHarris at 11:42 AM on April 8, 2016