Vista Realtek Audio failure

Hi. I have been lurking this forum for about an hour, reading how people try to fix what I am experiencing now with my computer. I need help from the major geeks here.. give me the most major geek you have.. i'm at my wits end.

To summarize what happened... recently my computer had become infected with malware.. I had system restored to an earlier date and then used a program- spybot, to remove the malware. My computer was cleaned, but I think this is where my problem began.. after the system restore- my realtek audio controller seemingly was not active. My computer came with realtek audio, so- through control panel and installer wizard, I could reinstall realtek audio to my machine. When I went to device manager, it had a yellow ! mark near it, showing that it did not work, error code 10. I banged my head against that for a while- downloading drivers, uninstalling drivers, etc.. until I went to uninstall realtek- except that setup.exe would not work and thus I could not uninstall.. I then downloaded Revo Uninstaller Pro which finally banished the broken realtek audio controller off of my machine, and deleted ALL files associated with it. I feel like I could have possibly messed with parts of realtek to aid its failure, like changing permissions after getting paranoid during the malware infestation.. would changing permissions effect it like that?

I could not find realtek in the control panel installer wizard after I uninstalled it, so I am guessing it is gone for good. I'm somewhat lost over my words at the moment... I've attached an everest report if a major geek can help me, because at this point i'm about to give up.. but I just can't let the machine win yet.. i've read what some people here have said in previous threads and it seems they are a lot more knowledgeable than me, I may find a solution here.

If I am too confusing, then could someone suggest an alternative way to regain audio- rather than this whole realtek mess? Such as a different product... or.. something.. I don't know.. i'm tired... I've been messing with this for hours.

 

Greetings, jesuschrist.

Are you running Vista 32-bit or 64-bit? Reason I ask: the HP site is showing a Realtek High-Def driver for Vista 32-bit, but not for the 64-bit.

As far as an alternative: it's certainly easy enough to add a cheap PCI sound card and disable onboard audio.

 

My system is 32 bit. I've still been messing with drivers.. I need a UAA bus driver for realtek audio to work? I downloaded something like that after not seeing it.. but I think it might be for windows XP only.. and I keep getting bluescreens when not booting in safemode. Although in safemode I am told that realtek audio has been installed- and while it does not show up un the volume mixer- it does show up in device manager- with no error.

 

Agreed: the UAA patch should only apply to XP systems.

Sounds like you might be having some remnant conflicts - try installing and running Driver Sweeper, then installing the audio driver and the driver update.

 

After doing that- I had gone to device manager to "add legacy hardware".. I added realtek (two realtek things showed up.. I added the first one). I was told "The software for this device is now installed, but may not work correctly. The device cannot start. (Code 10)"- and naturally it has the yellow "!" mark next to it in device manager. I will try adding the other realtek thing that showed up now... Same error code as the first.. hmm..

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943104

Discusses the code 10 error a bit.. i'm not sure what's wrong though. Thanks for helping with this by the way, if I cannot solve it by later today though- You say a new soundcard would remedy this strange problem? I thought so- but how would a soundcard fix the lack of a program(like realtek)?? That is my problem I think..

 

Adding an audio card is not going to solve the Realtek problem, but it will give you sound until you can figure out what's wrong. Listening to good music while thinking about stuff is a good thing.

For instance: the Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme is a good mid-level card that I'd bet would take 15 minutes to install.

That Code 10 looks hardcore - did you get a popup Fix-it like I did when accessing the KB article, and did you try it?

I'll try to read up on it (while jammin', of course) when I get a chance. Seems like there has been a spate of Realtek problems all over the forums lately.

 

YESSSSSS
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

IT'S WORKING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I don't know what I did.. or how I did it.. but I beat the machine.

I had used the recovery manager to recover hardware for realtek but that didn't work at first.. BUT.. I had completely unplugged my computer from the power wire in the back... plugged it back in.. and some how it works now.. thanks for helpin me

 

Good job! Glad you got it, and thanks for the feedback. :major