Thought I’d make this post to help save some time if someone else came across it. I was recently asked to fix a Windows 8.1 64-bit Laptop with no sound. The problem being specific to Windows 8 laptops
Talk about a night mare. The sound wasn’t working basically because the “Windows Audio” service wasn’t started. The problem is this thing relies on 3 other dependancies before it can work
– Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
– Multimedia Class Scheduler (MMCSS)
– AudioEndpointBuilder
Everything would start except for the AudioEndpointBuilder. It would fail with an error code 193:0xc1. The log in even viewer said it was not a 32-bit application
After going through various troubleshooting procedures after going through the usuals. I trailed the web and checked everything suggested
- Reinstalling the sound drivers, motherboard drivers
- Running SFC.exe
- Checking the registry – making sure the paths were correct
- Accepting the windows drivers
- Booting into safe mode
- Recreating the service.
None of it it worked, the only thing I could do would be either reinstall windows or find a solution
Luckily I found a solution (or rather a bodge)
Basically to fix the Windows 8 audio problem I did the following after finding it online…
– Open the registry
– Navigate to Microsoft\Windows\Current Control Set\Services\AudioSrv
Look for the path which talks about dependancies, there will be 3 entries
– RPC
– MMCSS
– AudioEndpointBuilder
You need to open this and delete the values for AudioEndpointBuillder and Rpc
Save it and reboot. The audio, should now be working
