Audio driver dies with player open and on pause

[anton_konst]

Hello!

I suffer from some kind of bug that prevents me from listening to music freely. My audio driver just dies when I leave music player on pause for some time.

Following steps reproduce the bug:

1. Open a music player application (The bug appeared on all of the players I've tested: the latest versions of foobar, Clementine and AIMP, strangely it does not affect in-browser players like YouTube's or VK's).
2. Play any composition.
3. Put the player on stop or pause.
4. Don't quit the player. Here the behaviour is really weird, the bug appears no matter what I do next unless I unpause the player before the driver dies: it doesn't matter if I leave the PC idle for a while (30 seconds or so seem to be enough), or do some work in a different application. One thing I've noticed is that playing a YouTube video with the player on pause delays the death of the driver for some time while YouTube tab is active, but once it is closed, the driver will still die after some time.

The death of driver means the following: no sound comes from any application or interface (headphones, speakers, HDMI-audio). It doesn't get fixed by restarting the player.

It doesn't get fixed by anything but a PC restart. And here the things get even more weird: the driver comes back to life after a manual reboot (that is 'Shutdown' menu option and then starting it back again with power button). I've noticed this shutdown to be considerably longer then a shutdown with normally working audio. And the power button LED behaves unusually: after the screen blackens, the LED continues to blink for a while with the cooler and HDD working, then cooler and HDD stop, LED continues to shine without blinking for another 3-4 seconds, then finally turns off completely. 

However, if I restart the PC with 'Restart' menu option, upon reboot the audio driver is completely gone and the audio adapter appears to be completely uninstalled. The situation doesn't change after any number of 'Reboot's. The only solution I've noticed to work after that is reinstalling the driver manually and the 'Shutdown' -> Power button start routine.

Windows' 'Troubleshooting' dialog doesn't help. Uninstalling the Windows' updates doesn't help. Upgrading BIOS doesn't help.  As of now I have the latest Conexant driver available at HP support website, reinstalling it doesn't help either. Nothing seems to help at all. I am getting desperate for getting rid of this bug.

I would really appreciate it, if someone could help me. I've honestly tried googling this issue, but no one seems to have had exactly the same case, and none of the solutions to similar issues helped.

upd. It might shed some light on the issue: the problem appeard after 1.5 months after the purchase. Prior to that the only problem with audio was headphones/speakers clicking whenever the audio adapter went to power saving mode. This problem seems to have disappeared as of now, I'm not sure what exactly fixed it -- I've tried a lot of ways (including manually changing registry keys corresponding to power settings of Conexant audio). The ways this Conexant adapter and its drivers work are a riddle I'm unable to solve.

[Paul110]

I'm suffering from a different kind of audio driver bug but there might be a short term fix you can try. Basically you want to uninstall the HP supplied driver and install a generic Microsoft driver. The Microsoft driver is designed for maximum compatibilty on as many machines as posible so should work without issues, but, you may lose sound quality. Also, if like mine your audio driver is bundled inside another driver (Intel HD Graphics for mine) everytime you update that one, it will replace the Microsoft driver with the HP one. Not the best solution but it's worth having a go.

I found these steps from the HP forums here, credit to SteveCT99.

1. Go to Windows Device Manager > Sound, video and game controllers section.
2. In the list of audio device drivers, look for Realtek High Definition Audio (or whatever your driver is called).
3. Right-click and select Disable. The downward arrow displays on this driver, indicating it is disabled. (NOTE: At this point, you won’t be able to play any music files.)
4. Right-click and select Update Driver Software.
5. Select Browse my computer for driver software.
6. Select Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer.
7. You should see a window that says Select the device driver you want to install for this hardware. NOTE: If you see a window that says something like This is the best driver for this device, exit the window and repeat steps 4, 5, and 6.
8. In the Model box, highlight High Definition Audio Device (this is the substitute audio device driver) and click Next.
9. At the Update Driver Warning window, click Yes. You should see a confirmation window withHigh Definition Audio Device displayed. Click Close.
10. In the list of audio device drivers in the Sound, video and game controllerssection, you’ll notice that the High Definition Audio Device now displays instead ofRealtek High Definition Audio.
11. At the prompt to reboot, click Yes

If you want to tweak how the audio sounds after the switch, I recommend something called APO Equalizer and Peace GUI, which together offer very powerful tweaking with negligable CPU overhead.

Good luck, I've been bashing on at HP for a while now with my audio problem and they still haven't even recognised that the driver has a fault...

[anton_konst]

Thanks  for your reply!

This does not seem to help either. I've narrowed the problem to be the interaction between Conexant driver and Intel SmartAudio. The problem seems to appear only with an external display connected via HDMI. Couldn't fix it yet though, but I've managed to find this thread with a similar problem solved. Tried to contact OP, hope he can help me.