This fixed my system sounds. Thank you so much. My value for (Default) was "empty", but not "(value not set)". Deleting the entry fixed it.

You're awesome. This is great. I've tried to fix this...

Totally true. But you can't compare USB sound cards to onboard that flatly, anymore.

That pretty much is a thing of the past. Many onboard sound devices have better sound (and amplification/DAC features) as cheap USB sound devices.

It has been that way for at least three years in...

Sure, here you go:

126648

Yep, just ran sfc /scannow again - all fine.

I tried that, it didn't work. Threw the same error as the official driver from the Realtek website.

Hey DooGie - yeah, I was surprised, too. But that's how it is :)

Hey,

I've registered to maybe give some other users with the same problem as me a solution:

My sound card is an ALC889 on a Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD4-B3 and I'm using Windows 10 Pro.
The default...