Nvidia 3080, HDMI video out works, but windows detects no HDMI audio device

My system:

• Windows 11 23H2
• Nvidia 3080 FE
• Denon AVR-S960H receiver connected to HDMI output from vid card

I used all of this hardware before with Win 10 for years with no issues. I installed Win 11 a few weeks ago, and for a while it was working fine. But then the HDMI audio started getting flaky. Now, I cannot even get the receiver to show up in the list of Windows audio devices. Nvidia is aware of the device:



Windows is aware of the device too:



And Windows still puts out video to the device. But no longer audio:



I've done many searches and tried many things. Reinstalled video drivers. Updated video drivers, straight from Nvidia. Disabled every bit of onboard video/audio I can find (USB audio, Realtek, etc) directly in BIOS (in an attempt to resolve potential conflict with Nvidia HDMI output). Restarted Windows services related to audio. Deleting/reinstalling any video/audio related hardware in device manager. I am fully stumped. Bluetooth audio devices still work fine.

Any ideas? More data from device manager (hidden entries shown) if it helps:

Hello @The111 and welcome to ElevenForum.

Do this, to give us a fighting chance of helping you.

Get SPECCY (free), and post a screen shot of the main page. It will look like this...




Once we know what motherboard you have... we can give you a link to the motherboard "Chipset" drivers, which should clear up a lot of those yellow warnings in Device Manager.



Get the free version...





=========================================================================

To post a screenshot on this forum...​

1. Take the screenshot, edit it as desired, save to your desktop as .png or .jpg (max. size = 2MB)
2. Left click in your post, where you want to place the screenshot.
3. Click the Attach Files button at lower left, browse to your pic and click Insert.
4. After clicking Insert, I usually choose the Thumbnail (smaller) option, or the Full Image (larger) option.

If the "new" PrtSc key function is not to your liking... here is how to set it back to it's classic function...

Try Settings --> System --> Troubleshoot --> Other Troubleshooters --> Audio.

And here's the stuff I post for new folks...

Ghot said:

Hello @The111 and welcome to ElevenForum.

Do this, to give us a fighting chance of helping you.

Get SPECCY (free), and post a screen shot of the main page. It will look like this...

Once we know what motherboard you have... we can give you a link to the motherboard "Chipset" drivers, which should clear up a lot of those yellow warnings in Device Manager.

Click to expand...

I could have told you what mobo I have (ASUS ROG STRIX Z690-E), I built this machine myself as I've done with all my machines for the past 25 years. But I will paste a Speccy screenshot below. I am not concerned about the unknown devices in device manager, they were all there:

a) When I installed Win11
b) After I updated every mobo driver (and the mobo firmware) straight from ASUS website right after doing that, as I always do after a clean Win install

And the audio out over HDMI was working ok through all of that. Nothing has changed recently other than MS probably aggressively/silently installed some updates like they always do in the newer Windows versions.

But maybe I'm wrong and one of those unknown PCI devices is the audio device related to the video card? Doesn't seem likely though. Anyway, thanks for taking a look! Screenshot below:

FreeBooter said:

Try Settings --> System --> Troubleshoot --> Other Troubleshooters --> Audio.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestion, I should have mentioned that I tried that already earlier. Just tried again for good measure, output (a lie) below.

The111 said:

I could have told you what mobo I have (ASUS ROG STRIX Z690-E), I built this machine myself as I've done with all my machines for the past 25 years. But I will paste a Speccy screenshot below. I am not concerned about the unknown devices in device manager, they were all there:

a) When I installed Win11
b) After I updated every mobo driver (and the mobo firmware) straight from ASUS website right after doing that, as I always do after a clean Win install

And the audio out over HDMI was working ok through all of that. Nothing has changed recently other than MS probably aggressively/silently installed some updates like they always do in the newer Windows versions.

But maybe I'm wrong and one of those unknown PCI devices is the audio device related to the video card? Doesn't seem likely though. Anyway, thanks for taking a look! Screenshot below:

View attachment 93322

Click to expand...

The111 said:

I am not concerned about the unknown devices in device manager

Click to expand...

ALWAYS fix Device Manager first.... THEN troubleshoot.

You'll need to wait for an Intel person. But the way MS plays fast and loose with Windows 11... you need the latest chipset drivers, as soon as they come out. :/


You lucked out. ASUS has the latest ones (dated Mar 21st 2024)

Here's the Chipset Drivers Link

The long link...

Ghot said:

You lucked out. ASUS has the latest ones (dated Mar 21st 2024)

Click to expand...

Unfortunately I'm already using that one. It was 3/29 when I installed Win11 and updated all my drivers from ASUS. I saved the install files for reference too (I'm ridiculously detailed like that). So, things were working ok with that driver for several days before they started getting flaky.

There was a period of a few days where the receiver would intermittently show as connected, now it doesn't show at all. I'm tempted to wonder if the receiver itself is to blame somehow, but it works fine with all other HDMI devices that are inputting A/V to it, and it handles the video from this machine fine. Definitely a stumper...

The111 said:

So, things were working ok with that driver for several days before they started getting flaky.

Click to expand...

And we just had a Windows update on the 9th.
MS may have been messing with your drivers.

I also buy ASUS and build my own.
I always do this tweak... (I disable... "include drivers in WU")

The111 said:

There was a period of a few days where the receiver would intermittently show as connected, now it doesn't show at all. I'm tempted to wonder if the receiver itself is to blame somehow, but it works fine with all other HDMI devices that are inputting A/V to it, and it handles the video from this machine fine. Definitely a stumper...

Click to expand...

Intermittent problems, are usually hardware (or cables). When software breaks... it just breaks.
But I've never even attempted to track down a problem, with that many warnings in Device Manager.

Ghot said:

And we just had a Windows update on the 9th.
MS may have been messing with your drivers.

Click to expand...

True, I noticed that I got some updates on the 9th when I looked through the update history, but I didn't think it sounded related to drivers.

Regardless, I just reinstalled the ASUS chipset driver... no luck. Why do you think it is related to the chipset?

Ghot said:

I always do this tweak... (I disable... "include drivers in WU")

Click to expand...

Ok, that is a new one to me, and the value is instantly obvious, I've been aware of Windows trying to suggest drivers (and sometimes getting past my radar) for years. Enabled even if it doesn't help me right now. Thanks!

Ghot said:

Intermittent problems, are usually hardware (or cables). When software breaks... it just breaks.

Click to expand...

True. But the only connections involved here are a PCI interface which I have pretty high faith in, and a very new Monoprice HDMI cable. I'm still suspect of my receiver. Even before this happened, even back on Win10, it did some flaky stuff where it would get stuck in a loop that reset my cursor to the center of the screen, which I could stop by power cycling the receiver. Maybe I'll try one of the other HDMI inputs. Still, HDMI is usually pretty reliable at bundling video and audio. But I guess there is some internal hardware somewhere in the receiver that decouples those... but you'd think it would be shared between all HDMI inputs, and again the other ones work fine for other devices. Or maybe I'll just hook this HDMI cable straight to the TV to take the receiver out of the loop.

Ghot said:

But I've never even attempted to track down a problem, with that many warnings in Device Manager.

Click to expand...

Ha. I have a big tower with a bunch of old PCI devices I can't even keep track of a don't use. No idea what those are and not too worried about them, I've always had a few of those in every install I've done. But if nothing else works maybe I'll track those down one by one just to be extra sure they're as irrelevant as I think they are.

The111 said:

I'm still suspect of my receiver. Even before this happened, even back on Win10, it did some flaky stuff where it would get stuck in a loop that reset my cursor to the center of the screen, which I could stop by power cycling the receiver. Maybe I'll try one of the other HDMI inputs. Still, HDMI is usually pretty reliable at bundling video and audio. But I guess there is some internal hardware somewhere in the receiver that decouples those... but you'd think it would be shared between all HDMI inputs, and again the other ones work fine for other devices. Or maybe I'll just hook this HDMI cable straight to the TV to take the receiver out of the loop.

Click to expand...

Well, we can remove the receiver and the HDMI cable from the suspect list. I connected the video card directly to my TV, using a different cable. Still no audio device found. So if it is hardware related, it's either the PCI interface or the video card. I'm ruling out the former, since there's no way that raw data interface would somehow drop audio only. Video card seems unlikely. If I really want to rule it out I could find another video card or reinstall Win10 on a spare disk, but that feels like a waste of time.

So it's back to software. :-/ (And as a SWE, I can tell you that software definitely can be flaky... I write quite a bit of such flaky stuff ).

Update, it somehow has something to do with this: Redirecting

If I follow the instructions in that post and then reboot both devices, sometimes the audio is detected and works. Sometimes not. Sometimes, even weirder. The state I am in right now makes absolutely no sense. If the receiver is powered off, Windows detects it as a present audio output device. The moment I power the receiver on, it disappears. Beyond weird.

To be clear, I never had a problem with my audio service not running. But restarting it and/or changing the logon type as that article suggests sometimes gets me unstuck... for a while.

Update: I am 99% sure this was a side effect of having Kapersky AV installed. What a massive PITA. The next few days will help verify that theory.

The111 said:

Update: I am 99% sure this was a side effect of having Kapersky AV installed. What a massive PITA. The next few days will help verify that theory.

Click to expand...

just use windows defender.

sdowney717 said:

just use windows defender.

Click to expand...

Yeah I'll probably do that. For many years I didn't use AV at all (and ironically in those years I was doing a lot of things where I probably needed it). Today I don't really need it, but I figured it can't hurt to use it anyway. This thread disproved that notion.

MS defender is not quite as good as the leading paid options (source), but it's free, easy, and probably way less likely to mess up my audio. And if I don't even need an AV at all, then an "almost as good as the leading ones" option is still way better than nothing.

If you purchased a subscription for Kapersky, don't forget to cancel it because whenever the subscription comes due they will withdraw payment again automatically using whatever payment method you have on file whether or not you use their product.

Well, Kapersky was not the culprit afterall. I still don't know who the culprit is, but I think this article that I linked earlier may have misled me somewhat and got me into a (different) bad state. That article advises setting both of the services (1) Windows Audio and (2) Window Audio Endpoint Builder to run as "Local Service" (I'm referring to these below as WA and WAEP). But I am pretty sure (using a clean Win11 install as a clue) that the WAEP is supposed to be running as "Local System Account" whereas WA is supposed to be running as "Local Service". I've returned these services to the correct settings, and now I have a new (or old) problem.

HDMI audio works perfectly as long as the AV receiver is powered on before the PC. If the receiver is power cycled while the PC is on, the audio output stops working (but Windows still recognizes the receiver as an audio device). After such a receiver power cycle, the only way I've found to restore audio function is to reboot the PC too. I've found many articles talking about similar problems and saying you can workaround them by restarting the WA or both the WA and the WAEP. As a sidenote, I upgrade my Nvidia drivers just now since there was a release a few days ago. This did not fix the root problem, but it did act as a stand-in for a reboot, meaning it temporarily fixed the problem without a reboot required. So presumably there is some other action I can take (less drastic than a clean driver install), that will fix the issue without requiring a reboot. That would be a step up.

This is not super horrible, I can reliably get audio working with a single reboot. But that's still pretty annoying, and I am positive that using all of this same hardware (PC and AV) with Win10 (prior to the Win11 install), I never had this issue. I keep the receiver powered off 90% of the time, and prefer to only power it on when I need audio. But that plan obviously does not work now, so I'll probably just leave it on 24/7.

Any ideas given this new info? Should I start a new thread since the title of this one is no longer very accurate?

The111 said:

so I'll probably just leave it on 24/7.

Click to expand...

That would not be a wise decision. Heat will be produced and will definitely affect longevity of the unit.
If unit heats up , it will turn itself off, what we call protect mode. Does your unit support some sort of
standby or sleep mode?

Flashorn said:

That would not be a wise decision. Heat will be produced and will definitely affect longevity of the unit.
If unit heats up , it will turn itself off, what we call protect mode. Does your unit support some sort of
standby or sleep mode?

Click to expand...

Thanks, but I am aware of that tradeoff and not concerned about it. Every AVR I've owned has been replaced long before failure, and many of these I lived in a house that never went below 85F in the summers, and I left them on 24/7. My new house never goes above 72F, and I don't even like this AVR that much to begin with. I'll replace it within the next few years, if it fails early, no sweat off my back.

But all of that is orthogonal to my issue anyway. Of course I don't want to leave it on 24/7 indefinitely. That's just a temporary workaround I have discovered is an option, until I figure out the root cause of the issue.