Audio Randomly Stopped Working

[RemondReed]

So, I turned on the family desktop, and after using it for a little bit, realised the speakers were not making noise while watching a video. They weren't muted. I did a diagnostic, it said some Windows Generic Audio driver was having an issue, I can't find that driver anywhere in C: Drive, Device Manager, Task Manager, so I go download Realtek's audio driver for Windows 10 from 2020 in hopes it fixes the issue.

Instead, it made it worse. MUCH WORSE. Now, the device's onboard, built-in speakers and microphone aren't even recognised, and any other speaker drivers aren't to be found either in Device Manager. HP Support Assistant is as useful as a pile of crap, quite literally telling me the issue I already knew, Microsoft has 0 documentation on this type of issue (which is ridiculous), and I got no one to help.

I've heard that factory resetting the device fixes the issue, but I share this device with 5 other people. I'd rather not have to delete everything on this desktop. 

[banhien]

@RemondReed 

No Windows 11 drivers for the series of your machine

              https://support.hp.com/au-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-pavilion-24-r100-all-in-one-desktop-series/19421...

Please use the following Guide first

             https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/ish_7391282-7391308-16/hpsbhf03828

Worse case, please reinstall old driver:

     (a) Download the following driver and save on your computer,
                 https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp102001-102500/sp102278.exe

     (b) Go to Device Manager, Sound to uninstall sound driver (Realtek) and reboot,
     (c) Right click downloaded file and select Run as administrator,
     (d) Reboot again.

Regards.