my audio driver vanishes when screen goes to sleep

Soldato
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I wasn't getting this problem before I reinstalled WIN10, now I am.

When the screen goes to sleep after 10 minutes, the audio playback device disappears. I have to either restart, or uninstall and reinstall the device from device manager to get sound back.

Note that this is the intel playback device, not the realtek 7.1 surround sound built into the motherboard which I don't use as I'm using the monitor speakers.

Any ideas on how to fix this annoyance. I don't really want to reinstall again as I did it last time to clean up my system after the initial build.

Thanks
 
Sorry to bump but anyone have any ideas?

I uninstalled and completely removed the driver file (Intel HDMI audio device I think it was called), now windows has used its generic one (high definition audio device), but it's still doing it.
 
While it may be more of a workaround than a solution, you could set your screen to never sleep and use the "Blank" screensaver instead, this should stop the audio device disappearing. Another option would be to set your screen to never sleep and simply turn off the monitor when you're stepping away from the PC.

As to why it happens, I have no idea, there may be something in the advanced power settings about it (Control Panel->Power options->Change plan settings->Change advanced power settings) but I don't have onboard video to check.
 
While it may be more of a workaround than a solution, you could set your screen to never sleep and use the "Blank" screensaver instead, this should stop the audio device disappearing. Another option would be to set your screen to never sleep and simply turn off the monitor when you're stepping away from the PC.

As to why it happens, I have no idea, there may be something in the advanced power settings about it (Control Panel->Power options->Change plan settings->Change advanced power settings) but I don't have onboard video to check.

I tried the bit in bold. It still happens but in a slightly different way.

When turning the screen back on the sound panel says the device is not plugged in - see below.

eg9w11.jpg
 
I'm having the same problem. sometimes after waking from sleep, i cant play any audio at all. the daft thing is, if i try to test the playback device, it'll fail the test and pop up a 'cant play audio' error or something like that, then i'll get the usual error ding ...though the speakers. yep. Well done Microsoft :p
 
need to make sure drivers are installed in the right order, at least for my dell laptop,
installed the Intel HD graphics/audio, then realtec HD audio, then the Nvidia hdmi+sound.

Windows 10 default install did not even find the Intel HD driver, just a generic, so all the Intel HD panel I was familiar with was not present, and when I attached an HDMI device, there was no Hmdi sound device present - not so different to symptoms you have.
I re-installed drivers I had previously used successfully in win7
(long term if these MS idiots are going to install drivers and I cannot control it I may have to return to 7 - win 10 not fit for purpose)
 
Edit; Ignore this if re-installing the device drivers fixes the issue.

This really is an odd one.

Could be that something at the driver/OS level is polling the monitor too quickly after it wakes/turns on and not giving it time to register that sound is capable, though it shouldn't need to poll the monitor to start with because it shouldn't register as disconnected during a sleep state, I can understand it doing so if there's a power off because it has to verify monitor connection but it still should register the audio connection in both circumstances.

Alternatively it could be something related to how the GPU handles power saving when it signals a sleep mode or detects power-off of attached devices, if the GPU itself is turning off the onboard sound in those cases then its likely failing to turn it back on again in time for the OS to register it. This is the only reason I can think of that could cause the device to actually disappear during a sleep state, and to seemingly disappear and re-appear from a power-cycle of the monitor.

It would also seem that your default sound device has been changed according to the screenshot, which would happen if the currently active default device was removed.

If you aren't actually using any of the other devices shown on that list, could you try right clicking them and selecting disable, leaving only the monitor as a selectable device might force the OS to set it as default upon detection.
 
Thanks.

You are correct that the system automatically sets a new default sound device when this issue occurs.

I have reinstalled the Intel VGA drivers entirely, will re-enable monitor power saving and see if the issue is fixed.
 
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