I've been using my new PC for three weeks now. My setup is it's in my living room connected to my Yamaha home theater receiver via HDMI. Both the PC and DirecTV go to the receiver and it's the receiver I use to switch between them. Only one HDMI cable goes to my TV. Whats happened 4 or 5 times now is I suddenly have no sound from the PC. it just happened again. I've been switching back and forth between the TV and the PC this morning and suddenly the PC has no audio. It didn't shut down or anything, I simply switched back to the PC and no sound.

In the taskbar there's a diagonal line through the volume icon, click on it and it says no audio device installed. I checked Sound>Devices and same thing, it's empty. I tried the Troubleshooter and it came up blank as well. Somehow it lost connection with HDMI and thinks I have nothing installed. A simple reboot fixes it and now Sound>Devices says Digital Audio (HDMI). I don't think it's the cable because every time this happens a reboot brings it back without me even looking at the cable. Since this is a brand new system is this something with the HDMI controller on the mobo?

Any ideas?

Bob

I would look at the motherboard settings. I suspect there is a port or audio setting forcing sleep mode or turn off.

I've noticed something similar. I have my power settings set to maximum performance with idling to sleep after 2 hours. When it does sleep, I lose my Nvidia HD audio. But it doesn't seem to be the NVidia card that causes the problem. When I go into the Control Panel, click on Sound it's my ViewSonic monitor that's off line (I'm feeding audio to both my monitor and my KRK monitors). Bringing the display back on line corrects the problem.

YMMV

Jeff

As this is happening on HDMI, could it be a screensaver kicking in?

I don't have Windows 11 yet, but borrowing from a known problem of Windows 10, could you be receiving frequent Windows updates? Windows 10 has an annoying habit of changing default audio drivers and adding back the drivers I had indicated I wanted disabled. Some aggressive 'tune-up' type programs like Iolo System Mechanic do things like that, too. In other words, it's normal to have to review things like audio drivers and power settings frequently.

I agree Matt. Since Win 11 is fairly new, it's still common to see two or more updates in a week's time. I've seen it on 3 machines I run on it.

We've seen a lot of ideas by folks here but nothing back from Bob. Hopefully he can let us know how it's going.

I'm back. It's the middle of tax season so I'm pretty busy right now.

One guy I talked to thinks it could be the HDMI cable being too old because this is a new computer and the cable may not be up to current standards. I think it is probably one of the early versions of HDMI so I bought a new one. Here's yet another weird glitch. I simply switched out the cable and now no connection between the computer and my Yamaha reciever so I put the old one back and still nada. Now I'm going whatthehell? I messed around with it for a half hour trying 2 other cables and no, what worked fine with the original cable now seems dead no matter what cable I tried. I have 4 inputs on the receiver so I gave up on input 2 (1 is the sat box) and plugged into input 3 and it's all good. On a whim I plugged back into input 2 (the original one) and now it's fine too. What? Man, modern electronics, eh? I must of plugged back into input 2 like 6 times and nothing, now as soon as I plug into input 3 which worked fine and then back into 2 it now works fine again? Jeesh. Anyway after two days with the new cable no issues so far.

Thanks for the comments.

Bob

Demons.

The only logical explanation is demons.

Yep, that's it. I need to burn more incense and relearn those chants...

Bob

A guy I use to work with had this routine when troubleshooting. He would disconnect all the cabling to a suspect circuit board, remove the circuit board from the card cage, raise the board high over his head and vigorously shake the board. Then he would install the board and connect all the cabling. I can't tell you how many times those simple steps worked.

"Space Mites", he would declare, "Had to be Space Mites. Can't be any other explanation."

Look like Space Mites are still hard at work.

Well, my chanting didn't work. I was watching the news this morning on DirecTV and switched back to the PC and no audio again. The speaker icon in the system tray has an X and says "No audio device installed". As before a simple reboot fixed it. There is nothing to click on or off or configure in Device Manager, anything to do with audio is blank because when this happens. Same thing with the Troubleshooter app. It runs for a couple of minutes and comes back with no audio device installed so I need to install one. After the reboot it shows "Digital Audio (HDMI) High Definition Audio Device" installed.

My best guess and that's all it is, a guess is it's something to do with this being a Ryzen system similar to the incompatible hardware issue AMD had with Win 11 installations a few months ago.

Bob

Yep...exactly the problem I'm experiencing in my above post. All that I have to do is to go into the Control panel, click on sound and as soon as the Sound panel opens, the audio is restored. No reboot needed. Exasperating.

Jeff

Your issue does sound similar but it's no quite the same. I did open the sound panel several times and it says no audio device installed. Merely opening it doesn't do anything in my case, I have to reboot. I'm on day 2 since the reboot and it's all good. So far.

Bob

Well Bob at least one of us seems to be making progress with this. Me...not so much.

Jeff

I guess it's getting slightly better but no cigar yet. It's now 5 days and it did it again. Switched inputs to watch some TV, go back to the PC and "No audio device installed." Time to reboot anyway.

Bob

Maybe it's time to try a different tactic.

Have you thought about using a +++ HDMI Switcher +++ ?

My thought is your computer will always use the same HDMI port so it will stay active and on.

I bought a new 65" 3 days ago and now I lose sound every time I switch inputs. I tested just rebooting the system, have sound, don't open any programs. Then change the output on the receiver and bam, sound is gone. I can't understand how just changing TV's should affect this. If the PC goes into sleep mode and I wake it up, no sound, if I change inputs (not on the PC, on my Yamaha amp} no sound. Every single time. Rather than trying a splitter I have my Steinberg interface that I normally use on another system, I'll try using that and see what happens, it'll probably be fine because the audio will not be over HDMI. I don't want to use it as a substitute just a test, because no digital outs, no surround sound.

Bob

I'm not declaring victory yet but I 'may' have fixed it. Many articles I read say the same thing, go into Device Manager and check the display drivers. I did that and clicked on Update Drivers and it says the most recent drivers are already installed including just now so no help there. It just occurred to me that AMD may have newer or maybe different optional drivers available anyway so I went to their website and yes, there is a whole suite of graphics software available for my chipset so I installed it and for the first time since I plugged in my new TV 4 days ago I did not lose the sound when I changed the input on my amp. Fingers crossed and it will take some time to confirm this but that could have fixed it.

Bob

Let's hope that fixes your issue, Bob.

Win 11 had only given me one issue. Native Instruments Guitar Rig 5 worked with Studio One 5X Pro but Guitar Rig 6 would not work until I changed display settings.

I downloaded Win 11 direct from Microsoft and have only had two short minor updates in two months.

I have the same software on the other main computer running Win 10. I can not see any difference in using 10 or 11. Removing Bing from Win 11 was a much more difficult issue than on Win 10.

I can say that my use of the internet, in general, is becoming more problematic by the month. More sites are asking for money to log on and some medical sites have increased their cost by large amounts.

I have a computer at my house in France that I can log into remotely from Miami. It is amazing the limited amount of news information presented on common sources like CBS or CNN and how they are many times the same word for word. Contrary to what you may see on TV, Joe Biden was not the only person at the NATO summit...lol I am not sure there is any media outlet nowadays that can be trusted to present the facts.

Microsoft Windows is an intrusive and invasive system that there are not a lot of options to replace it with. Along with the obvious benefits of an internet-connected world, there are risks that continue to evolve.

I only have one computer that I did not build myself. A laptop, which was next to useless until I took it apart and replaced memory and drives and installed the OS myself. So far Win 11 has not been any more problematic than Win 10 for me.

Billy

It's been three days now and everything is fine. It just shows to go you that you really have to pay attention to details. Since I was having an audio issue of course I thought the problem would be somewhere in Win 11's sound controllers/drivers. No, since this is HDMI it was a display issue because HDMI also does audio. I'm not a gamer and the suite of software I installed from AMD is all about gaming but it also does sound and that fixed the issue.

Man, do I hear you about news sites. Talk about an echo chamber! I do a lot of YouTube watching and if you want to really find out what's happening go to YT and enter Ukraine news. There's good stuff from Australia, Sky in the UK plus my favorite channels run by former military guys from all over not just the US. There are recent vets of the Iraq/Afghanistan wars who are intimately familiar with Russian equipment, an Army Ranger, a guy who calls himself an average inftantryman in a Stryker, a UK Royal Marine, a good one from Estonia and one of my favs a guy in Germany who's a very good analyst. Some are putting up charts, analyzing battle formations and tactics. All young guys with recent combat experience.

As for political news, I don't even want to talk about it...

Bob