Go ahead and find the driver in your downloads folder and run it again.
If it’s there, great! If not, the installation didn’t work for some reason. However, we here at TechRadar like to make sure software takes before we trust it.įirst, go back to Device Manager, and make sure that “Realtek High Definition Audio” shows up under “Sound, video and game controllers”. Verify and finishĪfter you restart your computer, the driver should be installed. When the installer is done, well, installing, it’ll ask you to restart – make sure you do, otherwise the driver can’t finish its installation. Click next on each of the screens and then go make a sandwich while it installs – it’ll take a minute. After you grant access for the program to run, it’ll bring up a big blue window. Once you’ve downloaded the software, go ahead and find it in your downloads folder and run it. Just find your operating system and click the “Global” link that corresponds to it. You’ll then be presented with a long list that for some reason only takes up a quarter of your browser window.
It’s more than likely that these drivers will work for you, so just go ahead and click “accept” and move on to the actual downloads page. You’ll be presented with a prompt that makes sure you understand that some motherboards might not use these drivers. Go to Realtek’s website and find the downloads section. Next, you’ll need to download the actual driver. Download the Realtek HD Audio Codec driver Uninstall any duplicates, restart your computer before moving to the next step. This is just to ensure you don’t have any duplicate drivers. Once that’s done, at the top of the device manager window, click “view” and scroll down to “show hidden devices” and click it. Then, just follow the directions on screen until the device is uninstalled. Make sure you have the box “Delete the driver software for this device” selected and click OK. Once you do, go ahead and right click it and select “Uninstall device”. Once you’re there, scroll down to “Sound, video and game controllers” and find “Realtek High Definition Audio”. To do this, go to the Device Manager by either right clicking the start button or typing “device manager” into the start menu. This might seem counterintuitive, but before you go looking to reinstall your Realtek HD Audio Codec driver, you’re going to have to uninstall all traces of your existing audio drivers. It’s a relatively painless process, and we should be able to get you through it in a manner of minutes.
Luckily, that’s why we created this guide on how to reinstall the Realtek HD Audio Codec driver yourself.
Most of the time, Windows will be able to find and install the correct driver without much more input from you, but sometimes you’ll have to take matters into your own hands. Once you’re there, navigate down to “Sound, video and game controllers,” find the device that needs to be updated, right click it and select “update driver.” To do this on Windows 10, just right click the Start Menu then go to Device Manager. When this happens, the first thing you should do is go to your device manager and see if you can get a fresh driver through Windows Update. Unfortunately, there are about a hundred different things that can break your audio drivers. Unless you’re using a sound card or running sound through HDMI with the best graphics cards, the Realtek HD Audio Codec driver is probably what’s behind every sound your computer makes. Follow the instructions to uninstall the driver.Ĭhances are, if you’re using a Windows 10 PC, you’re using Realtek audio.
Right-click it and select Uninstall from the menu.
Locate the Realtek Audio Driver within Sound, video and game controllers. Method 4: Remove the drivers, and let Windows install its own.
Use the third step from the previous method to update the drivers for it.