New
#1
Win10 desktop headphones suddently stopped working
In a nutshell the problem is this:
This morning, my son's Windows 10 desktop was working normally, including the headphone jack being usable. Then hours later, audio wouldn't play through the headphones, although inserting phones into the jack was detected. Doing so would trigger popups in the bottom right saying "You just plugged in [or unplugged a device from] the audio jack." They'd alternate (plugged in/unplugged) every second or so, until the phones were unplugged. But the audio wouldn't go through the phones.
You just plugged/unplugged a device in the audio jack describes this, and one can find lots of instances in google.
I tried the obvious things:
- Same problem with different set of headphones
- Uninstalled the Realtek device driver, restarted - the driver was not found or reinstalled, and the sound disappeared altogether
At that point, I did a system restore to the way it was this morning, hours before the problem appeared. That restored the speaker audio, but the headphone problem (no audio, and the popups when a headphone was plugged in) remained.
I have seen several recommendations to run the Realtek HD Audio Manager and pursue a fix that way. But I don't know how to launch this program.
Some other material facts that might help in troubleshooting this:
- The PC had been used sparsely while my son was away the last several weeks. Today, after the last time the headphones worked, the June Windows update was installed. Although I then did a system restore back to the state it was before that update took place.
- I'm kicking myself, but the only other material thing that happened between headphones working, and headphones not, was an attempt to install an Atari "Backyard Baseball" game, circa 2005, purchased at a garage sale today. Of course, this XP-era game didn't work on the computer, and sometimes games try to install their own "current" (13 years old) drivers. However, (1) I can't remove the program; it's not populating the list of removable programs, so I assume it's not installed; (2) When I check the Realtek driver through device manager, it tells me the installed driver is current.
The problem/fix has to be some small little thing I am overlooking. Help!