Sound driver issues - help?

[Brookie23]

Ok, so I got a basic PC not long ago to use as a media centre in my loungeroom. But I've been having problems with its sound drivers. Basically, the sound was working until the computer crashed on first run about 20 minutes through a movie, and then when I turned it on again the sound icon in the system tray had a red x over it and when I moused over it said "No audio output device installed". I then did the following:

1. Disable & re-enable the sound card through device manager. Still the red x and no sound.
2. Uninstall drivers, then prompt Windows to reinstall the drivers by right-clicking on the sound card in device manager and choosing 'detect hardware changes'. Still the red x and no sound.
3. Manually download and install new drivers from this page on Realtek's website. Reboot. Sound then worked again, but the next time the computer was booted, there was a popup saying Windows is updating the drivers (reverting them to the faulty drivers? I don't know...) and the red x returned.

I have since repeated these steps but the red x is still there. I don't know what sound card the PC has, but the driver I had to download was called 'High definition audio driver'. The PC is running Windows 7.

[Joshuayu101]

Try reinstalling the driver. The realtek drivers uninstall the current drivers on the pc but doesnt install the new ones at the same time. So sometimes the user has to double click the exe to install the driver again after the reboot.

[Brookie23]

Try reinstalling the driver. The realtek drivers uninstall the current drivers on the pc but doesnt install the new ones. So sometimes the user has to double click the exe to install the driver again after the reboot.

It worked! Thanks! I just hope I won't have to do this on a regular basis... PC crashed again just before :/

[Joshuayu101]

It worked! Thanks! I just hope I won't have to do this on a regular basis... PC crashed again just before :/

If your pc is crashing alot, you may want to start looking at your memory dumps to determine the cause.

[Brookie23]

It's only got 1gb RAM I think and is running Windows 7... might be part of the reason

[Wrathlon]

Ive run windows 7 on a Pentium 3 600 with 256mb of ram and it was fine, seriously doubt lack of ram is the issue.

[Joshuayu101]

Jesus. 512 is the minimum

[Brookie23]

Hmmm ok, I'll take notes if it crashes again.

[Jay]

you want to run Windows 7 on your PC, here's what it takes:
1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor.
1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit).
16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit).
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver.

512 barely gets the installer running.

[Joshuayu101]

512 barely gets the installer running.

Win 7 starter and home basic require minimum of 512. Both flavors are win 7.

[Jay]

Clearly you don't get the definition of barely starting.

[Brookie23]

It just did the "no audio device installed" thing again when I booted it up. Installed the drivers again manually as I did last time to fix the problem... but does anyone know why this keeps happening? I'm assuming Windows keeps changing the drivers to a faulty version because it thinks my current version is incorrect or something. Even when I disabled automatic updates, it still messes with the drivers without prompting.

[Joshuayu101]

It just did the "no audio device installed" thing again when I booted it up. Installed the drivers again manually as I did last time to fix the problem... but does anyone know why this keeps happening? I'm assuming Windows keeps changing the drivers to a faulty version because it thinks my current version is incorrect or something. Even when I disabled automatic updates, it still messes with the drivers without prompting.

theres an another area where you have to tell the windows driver installer to not look for drivers through windows update. I'll have a look

Edit:

[Joshuayu101]

What does the current driver information say in the device manager for your sound? If its an microsoft driver then your theory is right. All i can suggest is an deep clean driver delete and reinstall latest version but your already done that, so i dunno.

I would use Driver Sweeper by guru3d to remove registry entries and left over pieces after you uninstall realtek via add/remove method in control panel

[grandinferno]

Ive run windows 7 on a Pentium 3 600 with 256mb of ram and it was fine, seriously doubt lack of ram is the issue.

Fine as in slow as shit fine?