Fun and Games with Windows 7

No, before anyone asks, I haven't gone over to the dark side and "upgraded" my Mac or Ubuntu boxen to Windows 7 ....

However, whilst staying with friends, I volunteered to help resolve an issue whereby he was getting no audio from his Windows Media Centre PC. The PC ( a Sony VAIO VGX-TP1 ) connects via a HDMI cable to a monster LG 42" LCD HD telly.

Having worked OK whilst running Vista, all appeared to be well following an upgrade to Windows 7; however, something seemed to change, potentially due to a pesky Windows update.

The symptoms were quite simple - no sound, anywhere, from anything, zip, nada, nowt, nuffink.

The plumbing is quite straight-forward; a nice chunky HDMI cable from the the back of the Sony, plugged directly into one of the two HDMI ports on the telly. We tried the normal problem determination techniques; swapping HD cables, powering on/off PC and TV etc. but nothing appeared to help.

To cut a very long ( 3 hours last night, 3 hours this morning ) story short, having upgraded/downgraded/regraded the audio drivers ( provided by Realtek ), I'd completely failed to realise that, in this brave new world, HD audio comes from the video card as much as from the sound card; the sound card only drives a so-called optical output on the rear-side of the PC. Once I downloaded and installed the latest drivers (15.​12.​75.​4.​1930) for the graphics card, an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950 from: -

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=18231&lang=eng

and rebooted, all was well.

For reference, we also used the most up-to-date Realtek driver (R2.35) from here: -

http://www.realtek.com.tw/DOWNLOADS/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=24&PFid=24&Level=4&Conn=3&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false

but this made no difference; I switched to/from the stock Windows 7 drivers, but to no avail. The "killer blow" was the Intel drivers :-)

Apart from trial and error ( and coffee ), credit must be given to this posting: -

Good news!  I talked to a friend that worked in the Windows 7 development at Microsoft and he had the same prob with 2 of his computers and figured out the solution.  While it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, the HDMI Audio comes from the video card drivers.  I went to Intel's website and chose my video card, and they had Windows 7 RC drivers up, I downloaded those and installed, rebooted and my HDMI audio is now back in the soundcard list and I tested it, worked great! So to all of you above, go get the latest video card drivers and try again. Worked for me!

http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7music/thread/a494af37-9780-4b4a-895c-b2c1fce17fe6

which provided me with the clue to upgrade the frikkin' Intel drivers :-)