I have the same problem with my Inspiron 7400 and I did the same analyze (with 6.0.9172.1 -> no problem and 6.0.9228.1 -> problem) !

Thank you for your reply! I went and updated my driver to Realtek Audio 6.0.9172.1 since I hadn't tried that one yet. It worked, but after three days the issue is unfortunately back again (today).

Maybe worth mentioning: when I checked the driver information, it was actually on 6.0.9228.1, meaning it somehow updated on its own at some point? But when I updated back to 6.0.9172.1, the issue still remained.

Same computer and same audio problems.  Windows OS and Dell update checks keep trying to install this problematic audio driver.  I would recommend the proposed roll-back and turning off auto-updates for drivers to be selective about installing 6.0.9228.1

Having the same problem from the beginning on a 7706 2-in-1 and googeling a lot, the solution I found was disabling the new windows service "Agent active runtime..." introduced in win-1901 or whatever:

What you have to do is to disable a windows service called "Agent Activation Runtime..." with some odd number appended to it.

This will likely turn off Cortana services and some such, but me personaly I don't use that anyway.

The one thing you have to do inside of a ADDMINISTRATIVE powerschel:

set-ItemProperty -Path "Registry::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\AarSvc*" -Name "Start" -Value 4


After that sound did work fine for me, what are your experiences?

Marvello: thank you for your suggestion! Unfortunately the roll-back function doesn't change anything for me, as whatever driver it rolls back to does not solve the issue either. However, I have disabled auto-updates for the future!

Martlled: thank you for your suggestion! I disabled the Agent Activation Runtime service as you said, but unfortunately it has made no difference. If it's relevant, I already had Cortana services disabled before all of this. For other's reference, what I did follows what was explained in this thread <https://superuser.com/questions/1478298/windows-10-service-called-aarsvc-70f961-what-is-it-and-how-could-i-disable-it>, except I used Martlled's command in PowerShell.

Hi ally88,

just do disable all Cortana stuff is not ehough to also diable the windows service that is related to it.
Context: No matter if you enable/disable Cortana, you still have the windows service hanging around, blocking your audio output, at least on a Dell

HTH, Mart

Sorry, I might not have been clear in my last reply! I did disable the Windows service "Agent Activation Runtime" by using the Powershell command, and if I check the values in the Registry Editor, the number has indeed changed to "4". I'm not sure why it didn't change anything though!

same problem.... worked fine on my new laptop for about a month - but now I'm experiencing the same thing.

I've got the same problem with a Latitude 3520. Anything with audio doesn't start playing until about 30 seconds later. We have 54 machines and all of them work when they are freshly imaged but after a while some of them develop the problem again.

We've done some investigation comparing machines that do have the problem with those that don't and it seems that a Windows Update driver update called "Dell - Extension - 1.7.2.540" may be causing the issue. 

The machines that worked and didn't work all had the same Realtek Audio Driver versions (6.0.9163.2) but if you looked under the Events tab the ones that had the delayed audio issue had an event where the device is configured with the Dell Extension driver. Looking at the time of the event we could see that the driver had come from Windows Update.

We are still working to solve the issue as just rolling back the driver does not work. We have used group policy to prevent drivers from being installed from Windows Update but it would be good to know how to fix this problem properly.

I thought I would add my experience to this thread as it seems to be the only one that is about the same experience we are having. Hopefully this may help.