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Inspiron 660 sound driver
I bought an Inspiron 660 with Windows 8.0 installed in late 2013. I upgraded it to Windows 8.1 with the approval of Dell support. From looking through the log, there were some Windows updates last Friday. Since that time I have had several problems with Windows (Control Panel will not load but sub-menus do load, and the Windows Store never loads). The problem I am concerned here is that the sound drivers are not working. I have done a reboot and then gone into the hardware tests, everything passes hardware wise, including producing sound over the connected speakers. I have followed the various instructions Dell has given to fix the problem, including completely deleting and forcing the re-installation of the drivers. One other recommendation was to install the enhanced driver for the chip I have. As soon as I did that and rebooted, I was given an error message that the chip cannot handle the enhanced driver. I have asked Dell for help, but they could not help me. I have run Malwarebytes (the paid version) and CCleaner to see if there were any viruses. Both came up negative. Any suggestions?
ww_cook
9 Posts
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March 30th, 2015 23:00
I finally figured what happened on17 March 2015. AVG did look at a Windows file and put it in quarantine. It has nothing to do with Dell or the sound drivers. I found the solution on AVG's Malware website:
I solved the issue by going to the AVG archive, finding the event in which my audio system was affected. i believe it was called system32/spool/drivers/x64/3/old/1/printconfig.dll
anyway, i restored only that event where all this info was deleted. i restarted my computer and everything was back to normal
I am glad for finally solving the problem. Thanks, Chris for all of your help and support. You are an asset to Dell. Wishing you the very best.
DELL-Chris M
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March 27th, 2015 20:00
We will only deal with the audio questions on this board. The control panel and store should be addressed on the Windows 8 board.
What specific Conexant audio driver did you re-install? If the audio is producing sound over the speakers, explain what you mean by, "the sound drivers are not working"?
ww_cook
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March 28th, 2015 09:00
I have most of the Microsoft problems fixed (maybe the sound is even a Microsoft Registry problem). So I will only deal with the sound issue here. When I click an F12 when I get the Dell symbol during boot up, I can run through the hardware tests (including the sound test) and it all passes. I can hear sound coming out of my speakers.
When I click on the speaker on the task bar (it has a red circle with a white X next to it), the system tries to fix the problem. The message that appears is "Starting audio services...: and then "One or more audio service is not running." Then I check for additional information and there is a message:
The following information makes me believe it might be a Microsoft problem:
I did totally remove the sound drivers and then reinstalled them from Dell. Under the Device Manager -> Sound, video, and game controller header are:
"Conexant SmartAudio HD" and "High Definition Audio Device"
I then went to the Search tool on the pop-out menu on the right part of the screen and looked for "change sound card settings." The message came up: "This system cannot play audio because the Windows Audio Service is not enabled. Would you like to enable the Windows Audio Service?" I pressed Yes and did tests for the Conexant SmartAudio HD Speakers (this is set as my default). All tests failed, but when I go to Sounds tab, it says that the Windows Default is set. If I click the Properties button, it allows me to update the driver, it says that the driver is already the latest. (Conexant, 8/6/2012, 8.50.12.0, Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatible Publisher)
Device HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_14F1&DEV_50A1&SUBSYS_10280581&REV_1001\4&F73A71F&0&0201 was deleted.
Class Guid: {4D36E96C-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
DELL-Chris M
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March 28th, 2015 17:00
Did you have any of these audio issues when running Windows 8? Have you run the Intel Chipset update here?
ww_cook
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March 28th, 2015 18:00
The system came with Windows 8.0. I wanted the Window marker on the task bar, so I immediately updated to Windows 8.1. Everything worked great until March 19, 2015 (for at least 1.5 years).I tried backing out the updates from that date, but the back-out failed. I went to the store where I bought it and they suggested reverting the sound driver to the previous version. Apparently, this worked for some people. Thank you again for your help.
ww_cook
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March 28th, 2015 19:00
I reinstalled the Conexant driver and noticed that the newest driver for the Inspiron 660 was from October 2013 and was listed as for Windows 7 systems. Are there no drivers specifically for Windows 8 or 8.1?
kirkd
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March 28th, 2015 22:00
Dell doesn't always provide drivers for new operating systems . You will need to find the Win 8 driver yourself. Conextant will have one for their more recent audio. You can search the Web for the driver. I did this for a touchpad driver for Win 8 on an old laptop. I actually found the driver on Dell's site, but not among the drivers for my laptop, but a more or less generic driver for Win 8.
DELL-Chris M
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March 29th, 2015 14:00
This driver dated October 17, 2013 is for Windows 8.1.
www.dell.com/.../DriversDetails
This driver dated March 18, 2013 is for Windows 8.0.
www.dell.com/.../DriversDetails
ww_cook
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March 29th, 2015 17:00
Thank you Chris,
I downloaded both the 32-bit and the 64-bit October drivers and each did not solve the problem. I did notice that they were listed for Windows 8.1. I am starting a search of the Microsoft site for Windows Audio and Windows Audio End Point Builder services. When I go through the diagnostics, it says that the drivers are OK but that these two services are not running. When I went to the Task Manager and looked at the Services tab, I noticed that Windows Audio was not running adn it would not restart. Endpoint builder is running, but it depends on Windows Audio to work. I will look into this a bit more.
Wayne
ww_cook
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March 29th, 2015 17:00
When I try to start the service Windows Audio, it comes up with the error message:
Windows could not start the Windows Audio service on the Local Computer
Error 0x800706cc: The endpoint is a duplicate
DELL-Chris M
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March 30th, 2015 21:00
I think you need to start over. This is not a hardware failure issue. It is an operating system issue. Ask the guys on the operating system board how to start over. Get the Dell installed Windows 8 functioning. First, save all of your data to dropbox, DVD, USB key, etc.