No Audio on Windows 10 PC - "Audio services not responding" error

Fairly new computer, a little over 3 months old. Woke up this morning to find that I couldn't get any audio to play through my typical set-up of earbuds through a headphone jack on the front of the tower (they work fine on my phone).

The error Windows Sound Troubleshooting gives me is that the "Audio services [are] not responding", which seems to indicate a problem with either the Windows Audio or Windows Audio End Point Builder services, both of which are running and both of which I've restarted and re-enabled in an effort to fix the problem, to no avail.

Other solutions I've tried:

• Restarting / re-enabling any other services related to sound / audio.
• Uninstalling and reinstalling my Realtek audio drivers.
• Performing a System Scan for corrupted System 32 files.
• Restarting my computer after each and every one of these processes.

If it's any help, whenever I mute or unmute the audio completely, I can still hear a very faint buzz of acknowledgement through the earbuds. I don't know if that indicates this being a software or hardware issue though.

Edit: Also worth noting that when attempting to test a sample rate / bit depth in the advanced section of Speaker Properties, I get the error message "Failed to play test tone."

Hi, you've probably done most of these- worth just running through, and then the comments at the end. (I'm not making any particular recommendation about Driver Easy).

Best fixes for Audio services not responding Windows 10 - Driver Easy

Do you have a relevant System Restore point you could try using? (Yes, SR restoring is hit and miss).

Thank you for your reply.

Presuming you likewise don't have a current disk image (which this forum strongly and repeatedly recommends) e.g. Macrium Reflect (free):

Create a new user for test purposes.
Log in as that user.
If you don't have the same problem, it's probably a user profile problem.

If you do, delete that user and try Tweaking.com's free cautious repair tool, selecting only the repairs you think might be relevant.

If that doesn't help, rather than spending perhaps a couple of days trying things, you could do an in-place upgrade repair install which keeps all progs and data.

Thank you for your reply.

You don't need to do a clean install - but a repair install which keeps all progs and data.

Download an iso of the same build as now.
Rt click it, Mount
Double click the new drive created
Doucble click setup.exe

- Mount- assumes no change from default association for iso files.

Provided you don't experience any of the snags some are experiencing with 1903 e.g. audio stutter, that should indeed have the same effect. If you need to download an older iso, Heidoc's downloader (easy to find) helps.