My onboard audio suddenly stopped working on a Windows 11 Pro system with an ASRock B450 K4 motherboard and Ryzen 5 5500. I downloaded and installed the official Realtek audio driver from the motherboard manufacturer, but after the required restart, the driver disappears again. Realtek does not appear in Device Manager, including under hidden devices or Sound, video and game controllers, and there are no unknown devices or warning icons under System devices. The computer behaves as though the audio hardware is no longer detected at all. Could the onboard audio chip have failed without visible damage, or is Windows somehow rejecting it during startup?
1 Answer
A damaged or corrupted chipset installation can sometimes make onboard devices disappear. Installing the motherboard’s chipset drivers again may be worth trying before taking more drastic steps. To separate a Windows problem from hardware failure, boot a Linux distribution from a USB drive and check whether its audio device is detected there. If Linux also cannot see it, the motherboard audio hardware or its firmware settings are more likely to be the problem.
I tested it with Ubuntu from a USB drive and got the same result—the audio hardware still wasn’t detected. I may end up reinstalling Windows, although that probably won’t help if Linux also cannot see the device.