News

Intel Driver Causes Windows 10 Devices To Lose Sound

• By Kurt Mackie
• 10/16/2018

Devices running Windows 10 version 1803 or 1809 that have lost sound have an updated Intel Smart Sound Technology driver to blame, Microsoft said in a community post last week.

According to Microsoft, Intel had "unintentionally" released the updated driver through Microsoft's Windows Update service. The faulty driver is version 9.21.0.3755 of the Intel Smart Sound Technology audio controller.

Microsoft worked with Intel on Oct. 11 to address the issue and stopped delivery of the driver through Windows Update. Various users had described the problem in this Reddit forum and this Microsoft forum.

For those users that got the problematic Intel driver, Microsoft's community post described steps to take to remove it, which is thought to resolve the issue upon system reboot. However, a Microsoft developer blog post on Friday noted (at the end) that Microsoft is pushing out an update that will do the work of removing the driver for users.

The update is described in Knowledge Base article KB4468550. It applies not just to Windows 10 versions 1803 and 1809, but also Windows 10 version 1709. In essence, the update to remove the driver is coming through Windows Update automatically. Alternatively, it's possible for users to download this update from the Microsoft Update Catalog Web site.

Likely, the deployment of the KB4468550 update will be simpler for users than having to manually delete the faulty driver.

Microsoft earlier last week described a problem with a faulty HP keyboard driver that resulted in blue screen problems for HP PCs using Windows 10 versions 1803 and 1809. This problem is also being addressed via a patch automatically coming through Windows Update.

Microsoft's faster Windows 10 update process possibly is not just a problem for organizations trying to keep pace. It also seems to be a problem for Microsoft's partners building drivers.