Acer Switch 10 - No Audio Hardware?

thasatelliteguy

OK, here's the current details on my system:

Switch 10

SW05-012-16GW

32bit

64gb

Windows 10 Pro (10049)

 

Now, except for this, it's a wonderful machine, especially for under $300. Of course, everything worked as intended out of the box, so it isn't a bad hardware issue. I, of course, am not an "out of the box" kinda guy...lol  It came with Windows 8.1 w/Bling. Again, everything was OK. I decided to try Windows 10. I DL the OS, put it on a thumbdrive, booted, and set out to destroy Zuess. I wiped all partitions, as when you have every intention of UG Windows permanently, very soon, a recovery that reverts you isn't usually much good anyhow. I initially had a bear of a time getting everything working with what few drivers were there for 10, and forcing some in from 8, but everything is actually running very smoothly except audio. No matter what I do, I cannot get it to use the internal speakers/mic. It IS using the internal 'sound card'. I am getting the dreaded "No speakers or headphones are plugged in." MANY people are having this issue with various models with Win8 and Win8.1. Even though it's fairly obvious that it's not ONLY a Win10 issue, it is only a tech release, so I wiped again and put 8.1 back and still had the same result... my audio is gone. I have BT in my truck and yesterday bought a BT apple-looking POS from Walmart. As soon as the machine gets anywhere near either one, you hear it kick in, (rather quickly and smoothly too for BT speakers) and everthing works beautifully. After much fighting and research, I decided that it wasn't a Win10 isolated issue and put Win10 back. There were new builds out and I was hopeful. But nope, same thing. No speakers, no mic. The realtek SW loads. It even tells my each time I plug in headphones or speakers to the side jack. It asks me what I just plugged in, just like before. I can choose speaker out, or headphones, and occasionally, headset. It knows when I plug them in, and when I unplug them, but no sound thru them, or with or without them plugged in, in any way.

 

My gut is telling me that this doesn't feel like a classic driver issue. The 'sound card' device seems to be working properly. I have no yellow warnings in DM either. However, it cannot be a hw issue either. It worked fine for a month right upto the second I pressed "delete". If it were certain things, like a COM port, I would swear it feels like it's "turned off" in BIOS. But I have never seen a BIOS control speakers and mic that way. My current hypothesis is that since it's a tablet, the mic and speakers are probably far more integrated and "part of the system" than what we think of in a normal computer. I have done a lot of studying up on the new UEFI recently. (cuz this machine forced me to in order to get 8.1 back...lol) Given the way BIOS's job is to initialize HW and hand it to the OS warmed up, and engine running, and given the way UEFI does the same thing, but more like SW running than machine language, is it possible that UEFI is not initializing the speaker and mic hardware properly? Could I have wiped out a .efi executable somewhere when I deleted the partitions? Maybe a file it needs, and the factory put there, but isn't really part of a "driver package"?

 

I hope SOMEONE at Acer, or anyone who actually knows what is happening sees this because there are a LOT of posts on the web of the exact same issue, and most are still unresolved. It was far to simple to create this problem. The solution must be known to SOMEONE because it worked before, and now it doesn't, and I didn't do anything the engineers didn't expect me and millions of others to do... wipe it clean and start with our own stuff.  Somewhere out there is a bios update, or patch, or driver that I either do not have or haven't loaded in the proper sequence or SOMETHING.

 

-Justin

thasatelliteguy,

 

There are a couple BIOS' out here on our support site available for download, if you are not using the most current version, 1.13 dated 1/30/15.

 

There is also an application called Acer Launch Manager that's synergetic to a lot of applications and functions on the system, if that's not installed for some reason. If you wiped all partitions and installed the recovery media you created it should all be installed like it was out of box.

 

It is possible Windows is using default drivers versus the Realtek ones that should be in control You can try to download the Realtek drivers from our site, uninstall the current installed drivers, then run the installation of the drivers you downloaded to force it if needed and see if that works.