Fix sound problems in Windows 10

If you’re having audio problems, the following suggestions might help. The tips are listed in order, so start with the first one, see if that helps, and then continue to the next one if it doesn’t.

If multiple audio output devices are available, check that you have the appropriate one selected. Here’s how:

Select the Speakers icon on the taskbar.

Next, select the arrow to open a list of audio devices connected to your computer.

Check that your audio is playing to the audio device you prefer, such as a speaker or headphones.

If this doesn’t help, continue to the next tip.

The audio troubleshooter might be able to fix audio problems automatically.

To run the troubleshooter

In the search box on the taskbar, type audio troubleshooter, select Fix and find problems with playing sound from the results, then select Next.

Select the device you want to troubleshoot and then continue through the troubleshooter.

You can also launch the troubleshooter from audio Settings. Select Start > Settings > System > Sound > Troubleshoot.

If running the troubleshooter doesn’t help, continue to the next tip.

To check for updates

Select Start > Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update > Check for updates.

Do one of the following:

If the status says «You’re up to date, go to the next tip.

If the status says «Updates are available,» select Install now.

Select the updates you want to install, then select Install.

Restart your PC and see if your sound is working properly.

If that didn’t solve your problem, continue to the next tip.

Try these steps

Check your speaker and headphone connections for loose cords or cables. Make sure all cords and cables are plugged in.

If you have multiple 5mm jacks to plug into, especially on a surround sound system, make sure all cords and cables are plugged into the correct jack.

If it’s not clear which jack goes with which cord, consult your hardware manufacturer, or try the most obvious outputs one at a time and see if they work.

Note: Some systems use a green jack for output and pink for mic input and others will be labeled «headphone» or «microphone.»

Make sure the power is turned on and check the volume level.

Make sure the mute setting is not turned on, and try turning up all the volume controls.

Remember some speakers and apps have their own volume controls. Be sure to check them all.

Try connecting your speaker and headphones to a different USB port.

It’s possible that your speakers won’t work when your headphones are plugged in. Unplug your headphones and see if that helps.

If your cables and volume are OK, see the next sections for additional troubleshooting.

Check to make sure your audio devices aren’t muted and haven’t been disabled.

Right-click the Speakers icon on the taskbar, and then select Open Volume mixer.

You’ll see a set of volume controls for your devices. Make sure none of them are muted. If any of them are muted, you’ll see a red circle with a line through it next to the volume control. In that case, select the volume control to unmute.

Check your device properties to make sure that your devices have not been disabled by mistake. Select Start > Settings > System > Sound .

Select your audio device, and then select Device properties. Be sure to select Device properties for both the output and input devices.

Make sure the Disable check box is cleared for the output and input devices.

If that didn’t solve your problem, continue to the next tip.

Hardware problems can be caused by outdated or malfunctioning drivers. Make sure your audio driver is up to date and update it if needed. If that doesn’t work, try uninstalling the audio driver (it will reinstall automatically). If that doesn’t work, try using the generic audio driver that comes with Windows. If you’re having audio issues after installing updates, try rolling back your audio driver.

To update your audio driver automatically

In the search box on the taskbar, type device manager, then select it from the results.

Select the arrow next to Sound, video and game controllers to expand it.

Right-click the listing for your sound card or audio device, such as headphones or speakers, select Update driver, then select Search automatically for updated driver software. Follow the instructions to complete the update.

If Windows doesn’t find a new driver, look for one on the device manufacturer’s website and follow those instructions. If that doesn’t work, try uninstalling your audio driver.

To uninstall your audio driver

In the search box on the taskbar, type device manager, then select it from the results.

Select the arrow next to Sound, video and game controllers to expand it.

Right-click the listing for your sound card or audio device, select Uninstall device, select the Delete the driver software for this device check box, and then select Uninstall.

Restart your PC.

Note: Be sure to save documents and any other current work before you restart.

This restart will automatically prompt your PC to reinstall your audio driver.

To restart, select Start > Power > Restart .

If those options didn’t work, try using the generic audio driver that comes with Windows.

To use the generic audio driver that comes with Windows

In the search box on the taskbar, type device manager, then select it from the results.

Select the arrow next to Sound, video and game controllers to expand it.

Right-click the listing for your sound card or audio device, then select Update driver > Browse my computer for driver software > Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer.

Select the audio device whose driver you want to update, select Next, and then follow the instructions to install it.

If these steps didn’t solve your audio issue, visit your device manufacturer’s website and install the most recent audio/sound drivers for your device. Following is an example of a driver download page for a sound device manufacturer.

If you have audio issues after installing updates

If your audio was working before you ran Windows Update and now isn’t working, try rolling back your audio driver.

To roll back your audio driver

In the search box on the taskbar, type device manager, then select it from the results.

Select the arrow next to Sound, video and game controllers to expand it.

Right-click the listing for your sound card or audio device, then select Properties.

Select the Driver tab, then select Roll Back Driver.

Read and follow the instructions and then select Yes if you want to roll back your audio driver.

If rolling back your audio driver didn’t work or wasn’t an option, you can try to restore your PC from a system restore point.

Restore your PC from a system restore point

When Microsoft installs updates on your system, we create a system restore point in case problems arise. Try restoring from that point and see if that fixes your sound problems. For more info, see «Restore from a system restore point» in Recovery options in Windows 10.

If you’re connecting to an audio device—such as headphones or speakers—using USB or HDMI, you might need to set that device as the default audio device. If you’re using an external monitor that doesn’t have built-in speakers, make sure that the monitor isn’t already selected as your default output device. if it is, you won’t have any audio. You can check that when you set your default output audio device. Here’s how:

In the search box on the taskbar, type control panel, then select it from the results.

Select Hardware and Sound from the Control Panel, and then select Sound.

On the Playback tab, right-click the listing for your audio device, select Set as Default Device, and then select OK.

If setting your audio device as the default device doesn’t help, continue to the next tip for additional troubleshooting.

Sometimes having audio enhancements on can result in audio issues. Disabling them may resolve your issue.

In the search box on the taskbar, type control panel, then select it from the results.

Select Hardware and Sound from the Control Panel, and then select Sound.

On the Playback tab, right-click the Default Device, and then select Properties.

On the Enhancements tab, select either the Disable all enhancements or the Disable all sound effects check box (depending on which option you see), select OK, and try to play your audio device.

If that doesn’t work, on the Playback tab, select another default device (if you have one), select either the Disable all enhancements or the Disable all sound effects check box (depending on which option you see), select OK, and try to play audio again. Do this for each default device.

If turning off audio enhancements doesn’t help, see the next sections for additional troubleshooting.

In the search box on the taskbar, type services, then select it from the results.

Select each of the following services, right-click, and then select Restart:

Windows Audio Endpoint Builder

Remote Procedure Call (RPC)

If restarting these services doesn’t resolve your issue, see the next sections for more troubleshooting.

In the search box on the taskbar, type control panel, and then select it from the results.

Select Hardware and Sound from the Control Panel, and then select Sound.

On the Playback tab, right-click (or press and hold) Default Device, and then select Properties.

On the Advanced tab, under Default Format, change the setting, select OK,and then test your audio device. If that doesn’t work, try changing the setting again.

If trying different audio formats doesn’t help, see the next sections for additional troubleshooting.

Many updates require you to restart your device.

To check and see if you have installed updates pending and need to restart

Save your work and close all open applications.

Select Start > Power . If you have installed updates pending, you’ll see options to Update and restart and Update and shut down.

Select one of those restart options to apply the updates

If restarting doesn’t help, see the next section for additional troubleshooting.

Some audio problems might be caused by an issue with the audio system’s IDT High Definition Audio CODEC. This can be fixed with a manual driver update which allows you to choose the sound driver you want to use.

Note: Not all systems will have an IDT High Definition Audio CODEC.

To check and see if you have one, and to manually update the driver

In the search box on the taskbar, type device manager, then select it from the results.

Select the arrow next to Sound, video and game controllers to expand it.

Look for IDT High Definition Audio CODEC. If it’s listed, right-click it and select Update driver, then select Browse my computer for driver software > Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer.

You’ll see a list of pre-installed drivers. Select High Definition Audio Device, and then select Next.

1. Select Start > Settings > Privacy , and then select Microphone from the left menu.

Under Allow access to the microphone on this device, select Change. Make sure the toggle is turned On.

If you’re having this issue with a specific app, scroll down to Choose which Microsoft Store apps can access your microphone and make sure that the toggle next to that app is turned On as well.

How to Solve Sliding Window Problems

An Intro To Dynamic Programming

Sliding Window problems are a type of problem that frequently gets asked during software engineering interviews and one we teach at Outco. They are a subset of dynamic programming problems, though the approach to solving them is quite different from the one used in solving tabulation or memoization problems. So different in fact, that to a lot of engineers it isn’t immediately clear that there even is a connection between the two at all.

This blog post aims to clear up a lot of confusion around solving this kind of problem and answer some common questions engineers typically have. Hopefully, it will show that the approach is actually relatively straightforward if you have the right thinking, and once you solve a few of these problems you should be able to solve any variation of them that gets thrown your way.

How do you identify them?

So the first thing you want to be able to do is to identify a problem that uses a sliding window paradigm. Luckily, there are some common giveaways:

• The problem will involve a data structure that is ordered and iterable like an array or a string
• You are looking for some subrange in that array/string, like a longest, shortest or target value.
• There is an apparent naive or brute force solution that runs in O(N²), O(2^N) or some other large time complexity.

But the biggest giveaway is that the thing you are looking for is often some kind of optimal, like the longest sequence or shortest sequence of something that satisfies a given condition exactly.

And the amazing thing about sliding window problems is that most of the time they can be solved in O(N) time and O(1) space complexity.

For example, in Bit Flip, you are looking for the longest continuous sequence of 1s that you can form in a given array of 0s and 1s, if you have the ability to flip some number of those 0s to 1s.

Maximize number of 0s by flipping a subarray — GeeksforGeeks

Given a binary array, find the maximum number zeros in an array with one flip of a subarray allowed. A flip operation…

In Minimum Window Substring, you are looking for the shortest sequence of characters in a string that contains all of the characters in a given set.

Minimum Window Substring — LeetCode

Level up your coding skills and quickly land a job. This is the best place to expand your knowledge and get prepared…

Why is this dynamic programming?

This search for an optimum hints at the relationship between sliding window problems and other dynamic problems. You are using the optimal substructure property of the problem to guarantee that an optimal solution to a subproblem can be reused to help you find the optimal solution to a larger problem.

Optimal Substructure Property in Dynamic Programming | DP-2 — GeeksforGeeks

As we discussed in Set 1, following are the two main properties of a problem that suggest that the given problem can be…

You are also using the fact that there are overlapping subproblems in the naive approach, to reduce the amount of work you have to do. Take the Minimum Window Substring problem. You are given a string, and a set of characters you need to look for in that string. There might be multiple overlapping substrings that contain all the characters you are looking for, but you only want the shortest one. These characters can also be in any order.

Overlapping Subproblems Property in Dynamic Programming | DP-1 — GeeksforGeeks

Dynamic Programming is an algorithmic paradigm that solves a given complex problem by breaking it into subproblems and…

Here’s an example:

The naive way to approach this would be to first, scan through the string, looking at ALL the substrings of length 3, and check to see if they contain the characters you’re looking for. If you can’t find any of length 3, then try all substrings of length 4, and 5, and 6, and 7 and so on until you reach the length of the string.

If you reach that point, you know that those characters are not in there.

This is really inefficient and runs in O(N²) time. And what’s happening is that you are missing out a lot of good information on each pass by constraining yourself to look at fixed length windows, and you’re re-examining a lot of parts of the string that don’t need to be re-examined.

You’re throwing out a lot of good work, and you’re redoing a lot of useless work .

This is where the idea of a window comes in.

Your window represents the current section of the string/array that you are “looking at” and usually there is some information stored along with it in the form of constants. At the very least it will have 2 pointers, one indicating the index corresponding beginning of the window, and one indicating the end of the window.

You usually want to keep track of the previous best solution you’ve found if any, and some other current information about the window that takes up O(1) space. I see a lot of engineers get tripped up by O(1) space, but all this means the amount of memory you use doesn’t scale with the input size. So things like a current_sum variable, or number of bit flips (in the bit flip problem) remaining, or even the number of characters that you still need to find (since there is a fixed number of ASCII characters).

But once you have what variables you want to store figured out, all you have to think about then are two things: When do I grow this window? And when do I shrink it?

Different Kinds of Windows

There are several kinds of sliding window problems. The main one we’ll talk about today is the first kind, but there are a few others worth mentioning that will make their way into a different post.

These ones have a fast pointer that grows your window under a certain condition. So for Minimum Window Substring, you want to grow your window until you have a window that contains all the characters you’re looking for.

It will also have a slow pointer, that shrinks the window. Once you find a valid window with the fast pointer, you want to start sliding the slow pointer up until you no longer have a valid window.

So in the Minimum Window Substring problem, once you have a substring that contains all the characters you’re looking for, then you want to start shrinking it by moving the slow pointer up until you no longer have a valid substring (meaning you no longer have all the characters you’re looking for)

This is very similar to the first kind, except, instead of incrementing the slow pointer up, you simply move it up the fast pointer’s location and then keep moving the fast pointer up. It sort of “jumps” to the index of the fast pointer when a certain condition is met.

This is apparent in the Max Consecutive Sum problem. Here you’re given a list of integers, positive and negative, and you are looking for a consecutive sequence that sums to the largest amount. Key insight: The slow pointer “jumps” to the fast pointer’s index when the current sum ends up being negative. More on how this works later.

For example, in the array: [1, 2, 3, -7, 7, 2, -12, 6] the result would be: 9 (7 + 2)

Again, you’re looking for some kind of optimum (ie the maximum sum).

This one is a little different, but essentially the slow pointer is simply referencing one or two indices behind the fast pointer and it’s keeping track of some choice you’ve made.

In the House Robber problem you are trying to see what the maximum amount of gold you can steal from houses that are not next door to each other. Here the choice is whether or not you should steal from the current house, given that you could instead have stolen from the *previous* house.

House Robber — LeetCode

You are a professional robber planning to rob houses along a street. Each house has a certain amount of money stashed…

The optimum you are looking for is the maximum amount of gold you can steal.

These ones are different because instead of having both pointers traveling from the front, you have one from the front, and the other from the back. An example of this is the Rainwater Problem where you are calculating the maximum amount of rainwater you can capture in a given terrain. Again, you are looking for a maximum value, though the logic is slightly different, you are still optimizing a brute force O(N²) solution.

These four patterns should come as no surprise. After all, there are only so many ways you can move two pointers through an array or string in linear time.

Look for “Key Insights”

One final thing to think about with these problems is the key insight that “unlocks” the problem. I talk about it bit more in my other post on how to approach algorithm problems in general. It usually involves deducing some fact based on the constraints of the problem that helps you look at it in a different way.

For example, in the House Robber problem, you can’t rob adjacent houses, but all houses have a positive amount of gold (meaning you can’t rob a house and have less gold after robbing it). The key insight here is that the maximum distance between any two houses you rob will be two. If you had three houses between robberies, you could just rob the one in the center of the three and you will be guaranteed to increase the amount of gold you steal.

For the Bit Flip problem, you don’t need to actually mutate the array in the problem, you just need to keep track of how many flips you have remaining. As you grow your window, you subtract from that number until you’ve exhausted all your flips, and then you shrink your window until you encounter a zero and gain a flip back.

Wrapping up Our Example

So let’s wrap up the Minimum Window Substring problem.

We established the that we need to grow our window until we have a valid substring that contains all the letters we are looking for, and then shrink that window until we no longer have a valid substring.

The key insight here is that the smallest window will always be bounded by letters that we are searching for. If it weren’t, we could always shorten our window but lopping off unused characters at the start or end.

Some other insights to consider: there may be repeats of certain characters within our window, and that’s okay. But it does hint that we need some kind of way of keeping track of the number of repeats we’ve seen within our window, and not just whether we’ve seen a character we’re looking for.

This should immediately imply the use of a hash map, where the keys are the characters, and the values are the number of times we’ve seen a character in our window.

We also need an integer to keep track of how many characters we’re missing to complete our set.

This would only decrement when we see a character in our window that belongs to the set, but that hasn’t been seen in that particular window.

So let’s summarize the algorithm:

1) A result tuple (or two-element array) that represents the start and end index of the shortest substring that contains all the characters. Initialized to the largest possible range (for example, [-Infinity, Infinity] .
2) A hashMap to keep track of how letters in the set you’ve seen in the current window, initialized with all the characters in the set as keys, and all the values as 0 .
3) A counter to keep track of any time we see a new letter from the set when we grow the window, or lose a letter from the set when we shrink the window. Initialized to the number of characters we are looking for.
4) A fast and slow pointer, both initialized to 0 .

Then all we do is have a for loop where the fast pointer increments every round.

Within that for loop, if we see a character from the hashMap , we increment its value in the map.

If its value was a 0 in the hash map before, then we decrement the number of characters missing. But if we have repeats of a character we’re searching for we don’t decrement the counter.

Once you’ve seen all the characters you’re looking for, that counter will reach 0 and

Then we have a while loop within the for loop that only runs while the number of counter is 0 .

Within that while loop, if the difference between our fast and slow pointer is less than the difference between what is stored in our result tuple, then we can replace that tuple with a new smallest window. By default, the first time we find a valid window, it will update.

Then all we do is increment our slow pointer. If we see a character in our set, then we need to decrement its value in the hashMap by 1 , as it is moving out of our window.

If its value in the hashMap reaches 0 , then the number of characters we are missing now increments to 1 , and we will break out of the while loop next round.

And that’s the entire algorithm. Here are the slides to the next steps in our example: