No audio device installed, old laptop upgrade to win10

Hi all,

I'm new here, I will try to be brief. FYI English is not my first language.

I have Asus K73SV (I believe from 2011) and recently I tried to "upgrade " it to work better. My laptop has never been formatted, I only used recovered as I feared I will loose my win 7 licence.

Windows 10 version: 21H1, OS Build 19043. 1110

I bought SSD Crucial MX500 500GB, cloned my old HDD to SSD, put SSD into laptop and HDD into external pocket?( not sure if this is the word, probably not). After cloning , I upgraded to win10 (still had my data on SSD) and then I did clean install of win 10 from USB. After that I installed all drivers (using troubleshooter, 3rd party software that do that and for sound when I realized its not working I manually tried downloading various drivers).

Now, my audio not only doesn't work but It doesn't see any audio device (neither internal speakers nor headphones when I plug them in). I tried countless google solutions, I will list them but I have to mention: I'm not 100% sure I had sound before all this "upgrading". But I think even if my speakers are broken I should be able to use headphones via jack output don't I?

I've tried:
-installing audio drivers from manufacturere's site (no drivers for win 10, I only tried win 7 drivers)
-install latest REALTEK HD Audio drivers from their page (these were my drivers when audio was still working)
-manually add driver in device manager as legacy device ( this allows me to add Realtek HD Audio to Sound video and game controllers in device manager, but I cannot update those drivers)
-uninstall, roll back (cannot do that its greyed out), update driver in device manager. When I try to update it automatically it says best driver is already installed
-I've already clean installed win10 again - no effect
-troubleshooter obviously cant solve this, offers no sollution

Note: I cannot change speaker volume under bios, option is greyed out. Not sure if thats important
Note 2: After uninstalling High Definition Audio Controller from device manager it disappears but when I restart my computer its back again (even if I turn off coumputer, unplug power and battery for 5 minutes, keep power button pressed for 1 minute - oh, thats another solution I tried as well, that didnt work..).

I'm sure I tried more but I don't remember them all. A couple of screenshots for you:






If you need more information from me please let me know I will get back to you as soon as I can.

Cant find my motherboard name but other specs:
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2630QM CPU @ 2.00GHz 2.00 GHz
GeForce GT 540M
8GB RAM
SSD Crucial MX500

Did you get drivers from an official ASUS web site for your country? For example:

Official ASUS Web site (United States)
K73SV - Support

Windows 7 (64-bit)

Realtek Audio Driver

Version V6.0.1.6438 2011/09/05 100.61 MBytes
Version V6.0.1.6324 2011/05/12 81.84 MBytes
Version V6.0.1.6301 2011/03/21 81.65 MBytes

For my Acer laptop the Realtek Audio Driver show up like this

dalchina said:

- a key issue of course.
You might try creating a Win 7 live boot disk, boot your PC from that, and see if sound works
Two Ways To Create Windows 7 Live USB Drive

.. or put in a spare disk and reinstall Win 7....


It's unlikely a performance increase will be achieved by upgrading an old PC to an O/S for which it is not specified.

What was the problem you were experiencing?

Issues such as this may mean you have to try routes which are not preferred- e.g. driver updater tools (never normally recommended) in the hope of finding one that offers you a solution, but only for the missing driver .

I don't know if this random 3rd party site might help with an ASUS Realtek driver:
Latest ASUS drivers for Windows 10 - Official links - Ivan Ridao Freitas

This appears to be your driver download page (almost no one ever posts these, alas)
ASUS K73SV Notebook Drivers Download for Windows 7, 8.1, 10 & XP
- Win 7 x64

The list of items under Sound, Video and Game Controllers looks unusual...

I installed clean10 on new SSD so I was counting on performance boost which happend - my laptop is now much faster.
The problem I was expieriencing on my old HDD and win 7 was - very slow performance (never formatted disk). After pressing power, on avarage, my laptop took 2-3 minutes to open to desktop, then another 5 minutes for any software to open. SSD fixed this so I decided to upgrade to win 10 - which works perfect, expect for no sound...

I dont have a disk with win 7, it was preinstalled on laptop. I would have to download an iso or something and burn it on pendrive.

I've downloaded realtek drivers from Latest ASUS drivers for Windows 10 - Official links - Ivan Ridao Freitas
After insttaling and restariting computer it doesnt work. Tried to add legacy device using those drivers - computer gets bluescreen.

MisterEd said:

Did you get drivers from an official ASUS web site for your country? For example:

Official ASUS Web site (United States)
K73SV - Support

Windows 7 (64-bit)

Realtek Audio Driver

Version V6.0.1.6438 2011/09/05 100.61 MBytes
Version V6.0.1.6324 2011/05/12 81.84 MBytes
Version V6.0.1.6301 2011/03/21 81.65 MBytes

For my Acer laptop the Realtek Audio Driver show up like this

Yep, thats exactly what I did, downloaded them from this exact page.

dalchina said:

Thank you for your reply.

Win 7 can be downloaded from MS sources using e.g. the Heidoc iso downloader (free).

There may be a pre-built Win 7 live boot iso file you can download somewhere...

Win 7 on a SSD would of course been faster to boot as well. Win 10 on a HDD can take 3 mins to lock screen.

Mine on a SSD on a 7-8 year-old laptop takes about 9s.

Now mine on win 10 and ssd boots in about 16 sec. But it doesn't matter because there is no sound so it's hard to use it for day to day work/leisure . Downloading iso for win 7 , gonna burn it on usb and install it (although i dont know if I will be able to because my cd key is now working for win 10, will it work for win 7 as well? can i install win 7 without cd key?)

dalchina said:

You can run it without activation for test purposes.

I run win 7 from my previous HDD (which has all my old data + drivers). Audio works beautifully, screenshots below:

dalchina said:

What you can do from that is to save the audio drivers in use (and any missing drivers), then try reinstalling them on Win 10.

Backup and Restore Device Drivers in Windows 10

Cannot do the backup, getting error 87: