Rather odd audio issue on laptop (HP Pavilion)

When In Rome

Hope this is the right forum to ask.

So I bought this laptop second hand from a shop, it's very good aside one thing, the sound.

When I first played something back, the sound was very distant and crackly, so I right clicked the audi at the bottom and noticed Spatial Sound (Off) and discovered that it was checked. When I clicked that (presumably I'm unchecking it), the audio sprang to life and eveyrthing was fine.

However, on Youtube it just keeps reverting back to the original state. I start playing a video for example and the sound will start at full folume but perform a ten second fade-out. I go into Spatial Sound )Off) and there will be a tick, I click on it (though the tick remains) and the sound will come back but repeat as I describe over and over.

Could it be the reason that the previous owner took it to Cash Gen? It's very frustrating though occasionally I get lucky and if I'm playing media files, the sound will be constant.

techquest

Not sure if it will fix the problem but take a look at the link which fixed the issue on an HP Pavillion

Re: Sound volume goes up & down

Let us know how you get on please.

When In Rome

Extremely disappointed and irritated.

Downloaded / installed the 'software.

Later when I noticed the size of it, 250mb for drivers - really?

It restarted my laptop without asking that I needed to then was not on my laptop when it rebooted.

I lost all the Chrome pages I was working on.

I could no longer open Chrome from my desktop though now at the third attempt it has worked.

Then it seemed to uninstall itself this Realtek thing, then it asked did I want to restart.

Yet there's no sign of it on the laptop

WTF is going on there? I'm having to reply to this using my tablet.

Whatever happened, the audio seems stable for the moment.

techquest

No idea what was going on. So are you able to get back onto laptop?

When In Rome

Yes fine, I mean, had no problems with audio since.

techquest

Good to hear and hopefully all goes well from herein.

When In Rome

Thank you so much for your assistance @techquest

When In Rome

@techquest

today the laptop is completely dead for sound (was working fine yesterday).

I restrted the machine and have gone through all of the stages given on this link:

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                [Fixed] Sound not Working on HP Laptop [Easily] - Driver Easy                                                                                                        The sound is not working on your HP laptop? Don't worry! You can fix it! Follow the troubleshooting steps in this article to narrow down and identify the problem, and the sound will be working again on your laptop!                                                                                                                                                                                                        www.drivereasy.com                                                                               
The troubleshoot said that the Realtek audio wasn't responding, however going through all of the settings it is saying that the device is working properly - there is no sound whatsoever though.

Any thoughts / ideas appreciated, meantime I will shut down and reboot rather than restart and see if that does anything - should the sound begin working again I will come to edit this post.

UPDATE

Still dead. And if I try to uninstall / reinstall Realtek, it is saying that it cannot find the .exe in Program Files!

SUCCESS

Uninstalled Realtek and drivers then restarted. As promised, Windows automatically reinstalled it with drivers - sound working again. I may was well leave this entry up for anyone else experiencing the same issues.

techquest

Strange. What version of windows are you running?

When In Rome

Windows 10.

The laptop itself is very good. Everything works quicker than the last one. But these audio issues!

Hopefully it will, to quote Ken Goodwin, settle down now.