Audio Problems: first, muffled, barely audible sound, then, poof, Win 10 no longer sees my sound car

[Brittainica]

I know it's not much, but I didn't need this computer to accomplish much. Added a video card, successfully set up dual monitors. Had old-school Logitech 5.1 speakers (X-530) with the analog three wire cords (peach/orange, green, and black). Didn't think to try and plug those into the onboard audio ports - line in, out, and mic (I think). Instead, purchased a Sound Blaster Audigy FX (SB1570) sound card. Installed the sound card without issue. I should note that I was too dim-witted to first attempt to go into the bios and disable onboard audio, though maybe initially, it self-disabled when I installed the sound card? Speakers worked well, really well. In fact, it was loud!

Then all of a sudden, and while I can't be 100% certain of the timing, there was a Win 10 update on or about 12/8 and thereafter, the sound coming out of my speakers was faint, at best. In fact, even with the sound - master volume and every other volume bars - at 100, I could barely hear anything. Read through the forums and tried every option to try and fix the problem, but nothing worked. Then, all of a sudden while tinkering around - and I don't think I managed to do anything I hadn't done before - my speakers were gone and the dreaded red x appeared in the audio icon at the bottom right of the screen. According to Windows, my speakers and sound card were gone. I did everything short of smart things like creating a system restore point, etc. etc. But I went back to the forums and tried everything I could find. Nothing fixed the issue.

I tried to get cute and went into the bios and disabled something and enabled legacy boot. Yeah, that worked brilliantly. All that managed to do was disable one of my monitors. What irks me is that everything worked fine, better than I would've expected, then, suddenly everything went sideways, then a lot more sideways.

I would really appreciate any assistance that anyone could offer before I do something else dumb! Already talked to Windows Support, but that was fruitless. I wanted to try to go back into the bios, disable onboard audio, shut down my computer, pull the sound card and re-start. Then, disable and uninstall pretty much everything sound-related in Device Manager, shut off the computer, put the sound card back in and turn it on.

[savvy2]

Added a video card, boom

now you have more sound ports, called HMDI right

and with those now,

you need to learn to change the setting,

I have all that and USB to fiber DAC> so have all that and more.

and I must change what I want in settings

right click speaker icon in taskbar right

pick change output setting and do not pick HDMI sound

like :
onboard , to green jack out. TRS jacks to TRS speakers, 3.5mm  analog out. line levels 100mv. prox.

PCI  sound card, same as above just  sounds better maybe.

HDMI (to things that have sound on board, like monitors with speakers inside and sound chip decoder a dac really)

USB DAC (wow what sound this makes) (even have this in my Garage too,  this)

I must pick what I want now.  or fails.  I have no HDMI sound making monitors so all those are DEAD forever.

look in bios first

if adding any PCI-e sound card you may have to turn off the ONBOARD sound chip set. (it is useless to you)

for sure not using it (onboard) so why waste shared resources like Interrupts etc. for sound. 

not always just some times.

I will not cover drivers that is too obvious. for w10 and card matched.