Audio Issues after Windows 10 Update - Red X on Audio in system tray

 I'm going to work backwards

This is the link to the fix   This here this is the link

If like me you are reading anything and everything (including this small business Blog) all you really want, at this point, is the answer!  But do come back and read my whole saga on the problems I had with this Audio Issue !! What caused it and how I eventually found the right answer.  (By complete chance!!)

This is part 2 of 2

 

A Day or so after I updated the Anti-Virus I noticed that there was a red X, like the one above on the audio in the system tray.  I assumed that it was a Driver issue and looked in device manager.  There was a yellow exclamation mark on both the audio devices showing that there was a problem.

First I tried the Windows 10 trouble shooter.  It does often happen that a device gets put out of whack by updates or significant application changes additions etc. 

This did not work

I tried updating the drivers, both letting Windows do its thing and by trying the manual options.  Find on My PC and Have Disk and so on.

This did not work

I tried going to the source for the drivers, Realtek and Intel and installing them from the correct sources.  Ie Realtek site and Intel site.

This did not work.

I asked my trusted assistant (Google) and read many, many long and drawn out threads, about the problem, which had occurred it seems as early as 2018 due to updates.  All sounds reasonable.

Many pages and many different and weird and some not so wonderful fixes later I’m still looking at the same Audio not working icon

And it still was not working.

After many days…..

And Many many fruitless searches I hit on a solution to my problem.

I have since cleaned my browser and unless the planets align the same way as they were yesterday afternoon and I comb my hair into exactly the same messy exasperation I may never be able to find that page again…

It involves the registry key: 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4d36e96c-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}

And its entry on the UpperFilter

The value should be ksthunk and in my key was someother jumble of letters apparently relating to the now defunct Kaspersky.

I deleted the random letters after ksthunk rebooted and Eureka, gawd bless me Mary Poppins and By George it worked.

Trigger restarted, wriggled about a bit on start up and suddenly the red x was no more.

As always, I wish I could find the source, as regular readers will know, I like to give credit where credit is due and it definitely is in this case.  It was a forum post as there was discussion on the letters included in the value and I’m sure they said that the KSTHUNK came back on reboot after being deleted and it was the random letters that was the issue.  

This is the Microsoft Answers site that gave the fix that helped me.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-hardware/audio-driver-not-working-after-windows-10-update/edbdd93f-e614-449e-b3bf-52663add6462

Worked for me

The fixes I read, all went through describing the obvious, drivers, troubleshoot, reinstall, check windows updates,  who are very useful to the standard user but not necessarily for the more technical who try all those methods as standard and have read pages and pages and pages of the same.   But as it turns out, for me it was a Microsoft Answers thread that gave me my solution.

This is actually Part 1 of 2

This installment is where the story really starts!

Its been a while since I reported anything of note on the Blog or indeed anything at all, but I’m still here, even if I’m mostly unable to get out and about to do any real work for the time being.

I have been exploring the creative side of life with a bit of Cooking, Bread, sour dough and cakes and stuff and a bit of sewing, masks and bags and other stuff.  Obviously along with the new normal of some home-schooling the junior Lamas and getting out for exercise with Lamas Dog.

Every year about this time I have to update the Anti-Virus for Lamas Design, which includes Lamas Junior Laptops, a couple of desktops, Triggers-broom, and the network Managers devices.

This year both the Juniors were at home for this.  An inset day.  The rare few days they have been at school this year and they still have inset days, (shrugs and shakes head).  I gave them instructions, fully update their laptops, do the housekeeping required, (disk clean, restart, etc) uninstall the existing security, disk clean, restart.  Install the new one.

Despite my attempts to make them a bit aware of the housekeeping required for a laptop, it does not get done on a timely basis.  So the task that should have taken a couple of hours at most took the pair of them all day!  Trigger was done and dusted in an hour.  So was the other desktop PC.

The Network Managers PC took a while and then would not restart, but that’s another story. Its working now!

But…But…But.. I hear your say, are you not a Kaspersky Internet Security user?   Well yes I was, but this year the price of BitDefender was cheaper than Kaspersky and my reservations were always to do with the parental control of BitDefender.  Junior Lamas are not 6 anymore!! They are teenagers and have all sorts of other issues, but computer security is something I can now discuss with them and they can make sensible choices.

Lamas Dog
 finds this statement mildly amusing!

I

It eventually got finished by both of them.  They still complain about the slowness of their laptops, despite me suggesting various options, the amount of apps starting with the system for instance.

The point of this blog post was to share my Eureka moment.

But I don’t want to put the fix at the end here because someone looking for the answer like I was, is not going to want to read the rambling Ronnie Corbett anecdote above, and it may only be one of the fixes that they try and for them it is unsuccessful.  And I know how that feels.

So the story of TriggersBroom and its Audio issues is really the beginning of this blog post.