No Sound on Z800 and Windows 10

[agdodge4x4]

I believe it is a Realtek High Definition Audio Driver. But, windows 10 has a red X ad when you click on that, it runs a troubleshooter which never finds anything.  I uninstalled all the sound drivers that showed up in device manager, but it just puts them right back. So, I uninstalled and ran the ones I found on HP website.  Still...nothing.  Red X on windows 10.  No issues shown in device manager.

Help.  What is wrong?

When I click on the icon in teh task bar, ti says no audio devices installed.

How is this possible?  The sound is BUILT IN to the mobo!

[DGroves]

you have someting that is conflicting with the sound driver, start by looking at the windows application and system logs

you can also try a new clean install of windows 10, which will also most likely fix your problem

[agdodge4x4]

Unfortunately, this IS a fresh install of windows.  The device manager shows 4 independent instances of 'High Definition Audio" drivers. 

What application and system logs do i look for?  I see no conflicts or 'bangs' in the device manager.

[DGroves]

are there any addin cards installed or usb devices attached during the win 10 install?

where did you get the install disk/USB key? what build is it?

have you tried to reset the cmos settings back to default and then do a win 10 install

i have a z800, and the win 10 installer from microsoft, has no problems installing

customized OEM win 10 installers from dell/HP/Lenovo/ms beta builds of win 10/ or from the internet

are not confirmed to work, and may hav various problems

last a corupted win 10 installer is also a possibility, try re-downloading the installer

[agdodge4x4]

I'll get the build number, it is whatever was current as of last week.  It's Windows 10 Pro.  I did not install it.  I purchased the machine with it already on it.  Re-installing is not an option for me.  Literally everything else works fine.  There are no errors in device manager that I can see.  There are 4 instances of the audio driver showing up for whatever reason, but windows itself says no audio device installed.

There are no additional cards other than the factory Quadro Graphics card.  I'll play around with it later and see if I can get it going.

There are no jumpers on the motherboard or things in the bios that can be altered in order to disable the onboard sound, right?

[SDH]

Do things in this specific order, and I also use this basic method to clear out nVidia Quadro ODE drivers and do clean installs of the latest ones for an install that is old and potentially corrupted:

1.  Go to the Z640 HP drivers download page for W7P64 or W10P64 and download the SP76061 (Realtek driver installer for 6.0.1.7945, released by HP 12/16/16).  Have that on your desktop.     The Realtek driver installers are universal installers that generally will recognize and work on older as well as newer Realtek chipsets.  This method would work for a xw6400, for example, also.  This installer is for W7 through W10, 64-bit.

2.  Disconnect from the internet.... you don't want W10 to hijack this process, so cut off its access to the outside world.

3.  Go into the Control Panel for your W10 install and go to the uninstall programs section.  Go to any nVidia or ATI sound driver related entry you might find there and uninstall that.  Do not restart.  Go to any Realtek entry you see and uninstall that.  Do not restart.

4.  While still in Control Panel go to the Folder Options equivalent and select to show hidden files and folders.

5.  Back out of Control Panel and go to C drive and look on the root level of C for any Realtek entry.... delete that.  Then into the 3 program files folder including the normally hidden one and delete any Realtek entry.  These would be Program Files, Program Files (x86), and Program Data.  If you don't dump the Realtek directories from those 4 total places an old installer may get automatically activated on your first restart and you are stuck again with old/bad drivers.

6.  Restart, and wait a bit.  Som e drivers from the MS Windows hidden repository of drivers may get installed, but these should get over-written in step 7 below.

7.  Run that HP SoftPaq to install the Realtek drivers and program.... there will be a restart needed and it will likely do some added install after that restart.    Give it some time.  Should be good to go then.

8.  Back to Control Panel.... turn off that option to see hidden folders and files.  It is best to not run with that left on, but some of us do.  I don't advise that generally.  Reattach to the internet.  For this type of thing I generally don't see W10 try to force its MS-directed driver over what you did, but that is ensured by having your driver date (from Device Manager properties) be more recent than what MS has in its package.  I get my nVidia Quadro ODE drivers straight from the nVidia site and those thus virtually are always newer than what MS offers.

Let us know......

[SDH]

On to your question at the very bottom of your most recent post......

It turns out that yes, there is a possible BIOS setting that you are hitting.  Under the security section in BIOS there are hardware items built into the motherboard that one can turn off/make hidden.  For example, I had a HP workstation that would not play well with a wireless networking card we had to use.  Simply by turning off the LAN-on-Motherboard (LOM) chipset that wireless card began working perfectly.  HP states that by doing this the device turned off is hidden from the OS and BIOS.

You can imagine the end result if we later pulled the wireless card and forgot to turn back on the LOM in BIOS......

Same idea with someone who may have added a soundcard into a PCIe slot in the past and turned off the sound chipset on your motherboard in BIOS.....   I'll get you the navigation to that shortly.

[agdodge4x4]

That's exactly what I am wondering about.  It's at least worth checking.  I have two 'open blanks' on mine and since these were high end workstations at one time that are decommissioned and possible parted out, it's entirely possible that there was a sound card that was removed.  I'll check that first since I have to boot anyway and then do the steps outlined above if needed.  No big deal....working out kinks. 

[DGroves]

google,   " windows 10 system log files "  and you will have your answer it's the first entry google shows

i would also try resetting the cmos settings to factory default, and then try a reinstall of windows

[SDH]

To OP.... 

The navigation on a Z620 will be similar to your Z800.  Get into BIOS, go to the Security tab, go down to Device Security, and in there all should be Device Available except for the Embedded Security Device has a HP default as Device Hidden.  If you do any changes then F10 to save, Escape to get back to where you can choose to save the changes, and don't forget to F10 save on exit so the changes stick.

I doubt that is your issue, but it is worth checking....

If I ever make a change like that in BIOS, hiding a device, I always leave a note taped onto the inside of the cover.