How to Fix – No Audio after Graphics Card Installation – Troubleshoot

I recently got a new ATI graphics card to spice up my gaming experience. Soon after installing the drivers I could not extract any more audio from my computer. If you are facing a similar problem, Here is the troubleshooting steps to fix the No audio problem.

Graphic cards are lately also sound cards! Sounds odd? But it is so. Latest graphic cards often have a HDI connector or a DVI socket in which the HDMI signal slumbers. HDMI however means not only HD picture but also audio. Therefore a HDMI audio device is also always installed when a new graphics card is integrated into the system.

This procedure immediately brings in two sources of errors: One one hand, the new audio device can get preference over all other audio devices, like the sound card. On the other hand, the presence of an additional audio solution can lead to it, that an on board audio solution completely disappears from the scene.

If the usage of the on board audio device is set to ‘Auto’ in the BIOS, for example, the module is not even started. It does not appear in the device manager and therefore cannot be selected in the audio device manager. In this case only a look into the BIOS would help. Set the entry ‘Onboard Sound Device’ to ‘Enabled’ and you have the audio again.