Bang and Olufsen audio not working on HP Envy 360

[Vegan1]

My 2 teenage daughters both have identical HP Envy x360 m6 Convertible laptops purchased from Best Buy in August 2016. Some months ago, the Bang and Olufsen audio on both of them stopped working. At the same time, the CPU usage on both laptops became constantly very high. The task manager showed that the high CPU usage was due to the Windows Audio Device Graphic Isolation process. The high CPU usage caused the fans to run constantly. The built in audio troubleshooting software would temporarily allow sound to play, but would not fix the CPU usage issue. And, the sound would not play again the next time the computer was restarted, or after it awoke from sleep mode. They limped along like this until the school year finished. Now over the summer, I have been trying to fix them. From other posts online, this seems to be a common problem with this model computer purchased from Best Buy at about this time. And some others reported that Geek Squad, and even HP, had not been able to fix it. However, after carefully considering the various suggested solutions in this blog, I decided to try one posted by HP Support agent "Dvortex" on 6-21-2017.

                               IT SOLVED THE PROBLEM ON BOTH LAPTOPS!!!

I cannot seem to find a way to directly post this as a reply to Dvortex's original post. Maybe the thread is too old. But, it was a simple process, and it worked flawlessly on both computers. Basically, it lets the speakers operate using a generic Microsoft audio driver, rather than the Conexant audio driver that was associated with the Bang and Olufsen speakers. I did it on one of the laptops about six days ago, and the other one about 3 days ago. I have been testing them multiple times daily, and they really do seem to be working fine now. 

Since I can't find a way to reply directly to DVortex's post, I will copy and paste the text of Dvortex's answer here below.

"Re: Bang & Olufsen Audio not working

‎06-21-2017 10:16 AM

Hello, @lgiamber

Thanks for reaching out! I'd like to help 🙂

I'd suggest a workaround to this issue by using the Windows default drivers. Here are the steps:

• Go to device manager.
• Now maximize the “Sound, video and game controllers” from the list. You will see the audio driver. Right-click on “IDT high definition audio CODEC” and select “Update driver software”.
• Select “Browse my computer for driver software” – Select “Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer”.
• Select “High Definition Audio Device” (Not IDT High Def...  This is important) and click Next. You will get a warning message but reply “Yes”.
• Once windows have successfully updated the driver software, try playing the audio again and check.

Please let me know if this resolves the issue, or if you require further assistance.

Cheers 🙂 "

Here is a link to the original thread which includes Dvortex's solution. https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Audio/Bang-amp-Olufsen-Audio-not-working/td-p/6086186