My PC came with the full ASUS driver pack. I uninstalled Sonic Studio and Sonic Radar, but had imposed on me an update to Sonic Studio, an application in theory I did not have.
Because of this problem...

Asus Driver for Realtek Audio.

...I uninstalled the complete ASUS Driver pack (Realtek, Sonic Studio, Sonic Radar, A-Volute and Nahimic) because of loss of sound on the analogue output. Despite these uninstalls I found Nahimic Service still active and dozens of orphan files associated with Realtek, A-Volute and Nahimic and hundreds of related Registry entries. I believe that the uninstall process for the ASUS pack is ineffective and leaves active Services, files and Registry entries sufficient to cause the mysterious background imposed update I experienced. You may be seeing something similar. I would start with looking in Services for the Nahimic Service and disable it. Then look for orphan files and Registry entries.