Facing audio issues from Windows 10 update? Here's a fix
After a bug that deleted files without permission, Windows 10 users are facing another major problem - lack of audio. According to several reports on Reddit and Microsoft's support forums, Windows 10 October 2018 update, the latest feature upgrade for the operating system, is also compromising sound output. Microsoft has acknowledged the concerns and issued a fix for it. Here are the details.
Cases of broken, complete loss of audio
As users updated to the latest iteration of Windows 10, their machines started falling victim to the audio issue. Some reported a complete loss of audio, while others only witnessed cases of broken audio, where sound didn't work while gaming. A common error message that many users received was "No audio output installed", which suggested a lack of audio drivers.
Complaints also appeared on Twitter
Microsoft was quick to address the concerns
Following a number of reports from frustrated users, Microsoft investigated the case and found that the problem stems from an incorrectly installed driver. "An Intel audio driver was incorrectly pushed to devices via Windows Update for a short period of time earlier this week," the company noted in a blog post. It has now issued a fix via Windows Update to remove it automatically.
Fix manually, if update not received yet
If you haven't received Microsoft's official update, go for a manual fix by heading to Device Manager on Windows 10. From there, navigate to "View" and choose "Devices by connection". This will give you a list, which also includes "Intel SST Audio Controller" (driver version 09.21.00.3755) - an audio driver with a yellow exclamation. Just find and uninstall that driver.
However, this is not the only issue
Notably, apart from the audio and file deletion issue, people have also reported other problems like Task Manager showing incorrect CPU usage and modern apps failing to connect to the internet.
