Problem with sound output/Intel Smart Sound Technology SST OED, requiring hard reset

[Matt133]

On this laptop the sound stops working on a regular basis.  All of a sudden there will be no sound output from the speakers or from headphones plugged in.  A red x will appear over the speaker icon in the tray. This happens once every few hours.

When I look in Device Manager / System Devices category / Intel Smart Sound Technology (Intel SST) OED will have a warning/exclamation icon over it.  I have attempted to disable the device, delete drivers, reinstall drivers etc from here but nothing will happen even after a long wait - the progress bar just repeats left to right.  The only thing that will get the sound to work again is holding down the power button for a few seconds to do a "hard shutdown", and switching on again.

Trying to do a restart or shutdown the usual way will either just restart without enabling sound or will sometimes blue screen.

I have installed the Intel® Driver & Support Assistant which says everything is up to date.

I have tried updating the BIOS to the latest version.

I have installed all available updates relating to the Realtek Audio driver in the HP Support Assistant app.

Windows Updates are up to date.

I ran the HP audio diagnostics upon bootup which ran OK.

Where do I start in fixing this?  Can you help?  Thanks.

[Matt133]

Also today, my colleagues noticed in our Teams call that the quality of my mic input is really bad, whether using a headset or the built-in webcam - lot's of distortion and crackling.  I can reproduce this when doing a test call in the Teams settings.

I also noticed something called HP Audio Switch in the tray.  I've tried playing with the settings in there but to no avail.

[Matt133]

I just tried a fresh install of Windows to see if that would fix it.  I reinstalled using the option for a factory reinstall from the Recovery boot menu (full rebuild, did not keep apps etc.)

I decided to keep a diary of anything that looks audio-related to try and catch any updates/driver updates that break things, as this feels like it could be a driver issue:

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2020-06-11:

After installing Windows and doing critical updates:

Windows version: 1903, 18362.900

Intel driver version (System Devices / SST OED): 9.21.3869.1

Realtek audio driver version (Sound, Video, Game Controllers): 6.0.8688.1 [6.0.8688.1 Rev.A downloaded from HP drivers site]

Intel Display Audio (Sound, Video, Game Controllers): 10.27.0.8

Nvidia Virtual Audio Device Wave Extensible (Sound, Video, Game Controllers): 4.2.2.0

All working ok. 

2020-06-12:

These two installed automatically by Windows Updates:

Synaptics - Software Component - 5/20/2019 1.0.0.42 

Sound Research Corp - Software Component - 7/30/2019 2.0.8.64

Sound has stopped working - back to red X over speaker icon in tray and warning symbol over SST OED in Dev Manager.  Advised that restart is required.  Restart takes a very long time, bluescreens on one attempt.  Problem remains.

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Could someone from HP please respond and advise as to what I should do at this point?  I don't just want to keep trying random things.  It should work after a clean install.  Could there be a hardware issue?

[Vickie263]

Hie. Did you find a solution. I am also facing the same challenge

[Matt133]

I ended up installing a vanilla Windows 10 64-bit build (I'm not on the laptop right now but I think it installed version 2004) directly from Microsoft and that seems to have fixed the issue.  I kept the HP recovery partition there on the SSD just in case I needed it as it doesn't take much space.  For the record, I am running with the following, found in Device Manager:

Audio Inputs/Outputs:

Mic Array (Realtek): 10.0.19041.1

Speaker/Headphone: 10.0.19041.1

Sound, Video, Game Controllers:

Intel Display Audio: 10.27.0.5

Realtek Audio: 6.0.1.8515

System Devices:

Intel Smart Sound Audio Controller: 9.21.0.3541

Intel Smart Sound OED: 9.21.3541.1

The sound is working fine now, though there seems to sometimes be a very slight delay in starting sound when clicking play on podcast, local MP3, Spotify etc., almost as if the sound card goes to sleep after a couple of minutes. 

Only other thing to note for me is that there is a warning symbol over Other Devices/Detection Verification in Device Manager.  I'm not sure why.  Probably some HP driver it has not found due to me not using the HP build of Windows 10.  The face recognition camera works fine when starting up so I don't know what it is.  I'd like to sort that out one day as it's an annoyance to see warnings but it doesn't seem to be causing a problem otherwise.

Good luck!