Windows 10 has No Sound? Easy fix!

“Windows 10 has no sound- Help!” These were the words of my customer who had recently upgraded to Windows 10 and then for some reason had done a refresh (Windows 10’s in-place reinstall), and subsequently had no sound on their laptop.

Normally if Windows 10 has no sound I’d look into the Device Manager and find either a missing sound device, or a red exclamation next to it, indicating a driver or hardware problem. Device manager looked clean, however. The BIOS showed no options for disabling sound, so I doubted it was disabled and furthermore, it worked before the refresh.

The only oddity I noticed was that instead of “High Definition Audio Device” it gave “IDT High Definition Audio CODEC” as the name of the only audio device. I didn’t recognize that. When I opened that device, it gave the error “A device attached to the system is not functioning.” Okay, so this is why it isn’t working. I removed the device and then scanned for hardware changes, but the same device was detected, the same driver was installed, and the same “A device attached to the system is not functioning.” error was given. Time to try something else.

I did a bit of Googling and it turns out this is a known issue with Windows 10.

Windows 10 has no sound: The easy fix

1. Open Device Device Manager (Right click Start, click “Device Manager”)
2. Under “Sound, video and game controllers”, right click “IDT High Definition Audio CODEC” and click “Properties”.
3. Select the Driver tab
4. Click “Update Driver…”
5. Click “Browse my computer for driver software”
6. Click “Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer”
7. Select “High Definition Audio Device” and then click Next
8. When a warning comes up that it may not work, click Yes.

The device should now work, and you should immediately get sound on your computer. I didn’t think that solving this problem would be as easy as it was. If your Windows 10 has no sound, and this fixes it, please let us know in the comments!