Audio stops working after a couple minutes

Resublimity · ‎08-19-2019

HP Envy TouchSmart 15 Notebook PC
OS is currently Windows 10 (64-Bit), but it came with Windows 8.1

Model is 15 - j178ca

A little over a year ago (June 2018), long after my upgrade to Win10, my audio stopped working properly. No audio would come through the speakers when I'd try to play something.

Sometimes when I restarted, it would work for the first few minutes before going silent again.

I would run the troubleshooter. It would suggest to reinstall the driver when it would play a test sound and I wouldn't hear anything. I'd restart as recommended. Sound would work properly initially and only sometimes, and then after a few minutes it would stop working again.

Sometimes when sound could come through, it would be a warped static noise before it stopped working completely. This only happened a few times. Most of the time it goes from working to silent. The amount of time it works for after restarting is inconsistent, varying from a few seconds to a few minutes.

Audio also doesn't work via the headphone jack either when this happens.

Audio DOES work via bluetooth to another device (e.g. bluetooth speaker)... which has been my temporary solution to still hear audio while using my laptop.

Recently I reimaged and reinstalled Windows 10. I re-installed "IDT High-Definition (HD) Audio" "sp63555.exe" because there was no audio driver installed by default when I re-installed Windows 10 and there is no specific "Beats Audio" driver provided by HP when I looked it up. Others seemed to have this problem resolved after reinstalling this driver, however, I am still facing the same problem.

I'm hoping there is a fix! Please help. Thank you in advance.

banhien · ‎08-19-2019

@Resublimity

Please download and perform a CLEAN install the following IDT High-Definition (HD) Audio Driver for your machine

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp71501-72000/sp71886.exe

Regards.

BH
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Resublimity · ‎08-20-2019

Thank you for your reply, @Banhien !

I went into my Device Manager, and uninstalled the driver associated with my speakers. Then I installed "sp71886.exe" from the link you provided. If this is not correct for a "Clean" install, please advise!

The issue somewhat improved temporarily, but is unfortunately not resolved.

The first time I did a clean install of sp71886.exe, it worked for 10 minutes! Longest ever at the time.

I hibernated for a few hours and resumed - got a blip of scratchy distorted audio before it went silent. Got worried... Did another clean install of the same driver and restarted.

I let it work for 75 minutes (longest ever!) before trying hibernating/resuming again. This time resuming after only a couple minutes. Audio still worked for at least 5 minutes.

Shut down and booted up. For at least 5 minutes, it still worked, at least for 30 minutes!

Hibernated for overnight, resumed, and it still worked for at least 30 minutes.

Shut down and booted up - got the scratchy distortion again.

Restarted without reinstalling the driver. More distorted scratchiness followed by silence within minutes.

Shut down and booted up without reinstalling the driver. Worked for about a minute of audio before silence.

Did another clean install of the same driver and restarted. Worked for about a minute before silence. - Did this again with the same result. Looks like I'm back to square one...

Thank you again for your help. It was nice to have sound back briefly!