No Sound on Your PC? Eight Fixes, Likeliest First

You have already checked the volume, probably twice. You have looked at the speaker icon in the corner as well, and everything seems completely normal.

Silence with nothing obviously wrong is maddening, so I want to start where the answer usually is rather than where the tinkering usually starts.

Eight separate fixes, and they are independent, so stop as soon as yours makes a noise.

1. Windows is playing to something that cannot make a sound

More people land here than on all seven that follow, and ruling it out takes about ten seconds.

Documented by Microsoft: "select the arrow to the right of the speaker volume slider to open a list of audio devices connected to your computer. Check that your audio is playing to the audio device you prefer".

Click the speaker icon in the taskbar, then the arrow beside the slider. You get a list.

Now look at what is selected. A monitor connected over HDMI or DisplayPort counts as an audio device, and most monitors have no speakers at all. Plug one in and Windows switches to it and goes quiet.

The same goes for a dock, a TV you used last week, and headphones that are switched off but still paired over Bluetooth. If a monitor is involved and the picture is misbehaving too, a black screen at startup covers that side of it.

Pick your real speakers from the list. Sound back? That was it.

2. One app is silent while everything else works

If everything makes noise except your browser, or except one game, your PC is not the problem.

Right-click the speaker icon and choose Open Volume mixer. Every app that has made a sound recently gets its own slider. Each one has its own mute button too.

Something muted in there stays muted indefinitely. Easy to hit by accident, and almost impossible to spot afterwards.

3. Audio enhancements are strangling the output

Windows applies processing to your sound, and it does not always suit your particular hardware.

Documented by Microsoft in its sound troubleshooting guide: "set Audio enhancements to Off from the dropdown menu".

Go to Settings, System, Sound, click your output device, and find Audio enhancements. Set it to Off.

Reported working by owners on the Windows 11 board, with a warning attached. Several hit the opposite on machines running Realtek software, where turning that enhancement off stopped audio and video playing at all.

So change one thing, test it, and put it back if things get worse.

4. Let the troubleshooter look

Do this before you start the manual work, because it checks several things at once and can repair some of them for you.

Documented by Microsoft: "Select Start > Settings > System. Scroll down and select Troubleshoot > Other troubleshooters. Go to Audio section and click Run".

It checks the default device, the services and the driver state. If it finds something and offers to repair it, say yes.

5. Restart the three services that carry your sound

Your audio depends on background services, and those can stop without ever restarting themselves.

Documented by Microsoft, and it names three: "Select each of the following services, select and hold (or right-click), select Restart, and then select Yes: Windows Audio, Windows Audio Endpoint Builder, Remote Procedure Call (RPC)".

Press Windows + R, type `services.msc`, then Enter. Find all three in the list and restart each one.

The third one is the surprise, because Remote Procedure Call is not an audio service at all. It is the plumbing the other two use to talk to each other, which is why Microsoft lists it beside them.

6. Try a different audio format

This one sounds obscure and it fixes a specific, recognisable case.

Documented by Microsoft as trying different audio formats. Open Settings, System, Sound, click the output device, and look at the Format dropdown.

Step down to a lower setting. Try 16 bit, 44100 Hz, then test your audio again.

If your speakers cannot handle the rate Windows picked, you get silence rather than an error, and nothing warns you. That is why this fix looks like superstition until it works.

7. Reinstall the driver rather than updating it

Updating a driver that is already the newest version does nothing at all. That is where the trail usually goes cold.

Press Windows + X and open Device Manager. Expand Sound, video and game controllers. Right-click your audio device. Choose Uninstall device and confirm.

Then restart. Windows reinstalls a working driver by itself. If Windows has been failing to install updates lately, sort that first, because the driver arrives through the same pipe: a stuck Windows update covers it.

Ours, and marked as ours: do not tick any box offering to delete the driver software unless you have a copy from the manufacturer ready. On a laptop especially, the generic replacement is sometimes worse than what you had.

8. Windows says there is no audio device at all

This is the narrow one, and to you it will look exactly like a dead sound card.

The symptom is very specific, because Settings lists no output device at all. Device Manager has nothing useful under Sound, video and game controllers either.

Reported working by an owner on the Windows 11 board, 25 September 2024, on a Lenovo 81WR. They had already reinstalled Windows and installed the manufacturer's own Realtek drivers, and still had nothing.

The audio controller was sitting in the wrong category. In their words:

> "In Device Driver: System Devices→Intel Smart Sound Update driver → Pick from list → High Def Audio Works!"

So in Device Manager, open System devices rather than the sound section, and look for Intel Smart Sound Technology.

Right-click it, choose Update driver, then Browse my computer, then Let me pick from a list, and choose High Definition Audio Device.

That hands the controller to Windows own driver, and your audio device reappears in the list.

Status: last verified 20 August 2026 against 24H2 and 22H2. Microsoft names three services to restart, not one: Windows Audio, Windows Audio Endpoint Builder and Remote Procedure Call.

Why is there no sound on my computer all of a sudden?

Check the output device first. Plugging in a monitor, a dock or a TV over HDMI adds an audio device, and Windows will switch to it even though most monitors have no speakers. Click the arrow beside the taskbar volume slider and pick your real speakers.

Why does my PC have sound in some apps but not others?

That is the volume mixer. Right-click the speaker icon and open it, and you will find a separate slider and mute button for every app that has played audio recently. One of them is muted.

Why does Windows say no audio output device is installed?

Usually the audio controller has been assigned the wrong driver rather than failing. Look in Device Manager under System devices for Intel Smart Sound Technology, update its driver, and pick High Definition Audio Device from the list.

Should I turn audio enhancements off?

Try it, and be ready to turn it back on. Microsoft lists it as a fix, but owners with Realtek software installed have reported the opposite, where disabling it stopped playback entirely. Change one setting, then test, so you always know what to undo.

The Short Version

• An HDMI monitor counts as an audio device, and most have no speakers.
• The volume mixer mutes single apps, which is easy to hit and hard to spot.
• Microsoft names three services, and Remote Procedure Call is one of them.
• A sample rate your hardware cannot handle gives silence, not an error.
• Uninstall the audio driver and restart rather than updating it.
• No audio device at all usually means a misassigned controller, not dead hardware.

Where to Next

If picking the right output device fixed yours, it will happen again the next time you plug that monitor in. Windows remembers per device rather than per person, so learn where to click instead of trying to prevent it.

If you got as far as the last one and it worked, I would like to hear which machine you have. That fix is reported on specific hardware and I suspect it applies far more widely than the one model it is documented against.