KB5003173 Killed my audio

Question

"No Audio Output Devices Installed"

This morning when I logged onto my pc, there was a red X over my speaker icon next to the clock in the tray.

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UPDATE 5/18/2021: SOLUTION WAS THE FOLLOWING:

I figured it out.  

I opened CMD prompt as Admin and ran the following commands.

net localgroup Administrators /add localservice

net localgroup Administrators /add networkservice

I then restarted the Windows Audio service in services.msc

And what do you know, my audio is back!

It appears windows Update removed the service accounts from the Administrators groups and never put them back.

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This must have happened sometime on 5/15 as on 5/14 there was no issue.

I checked my Sound control panel and found that there are no Output/Playback or Input/Recording devices anymore...

I then checked my audio drivers and no issues at all...

I then ran the Sound troubleshooter, and it didn't do anything to help.

I uninstalled all my audio drivers and reinstalled them, but no change.  Rather strangely, I tried installing my original version RealTek Audio driver... It would uninstall my current drivers, and then install the new ones, then prompt for restart.  After restart, it opened the installer again and asked to do the same uninstall/install/reboot.  No matter how many times I did this, the Driver MSI package kept opening on boot.  Perhaps windows was preventing it from installing?

I checked my BIOS to see if audio was disabled there, but it was enabled.

I checked Windows Update, and saw that an update KB5003173 failed and wanted me to retry.  It would not work.  I did a sfc /scannow and DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth.  I checked my Aorus drivers and saw there was an AMD chipset update, so I installed it.  After reboot, the KB5003173 successfully installed.

Audio still broken at this point...

I tried to uninstall KB5003173 but it didn't work and I got this...

I then cruised this MS Answers site and found tons of other people with the same issue, but none of the proposed solutions seemed to work for them or I.  One of them even recommended doing an In-place Windows 10 Upgrade / Install.  I did this and guess what? It's still broken.

I checked my update history, and these are the only things that installed or tried to install on 5/15/21:

This originally had a date of 5/15, but I got to it work today on 5/16.

The only other things were these....

Windows Defender is my only security software.

My Hardware:

Why does this say no sound card found???????

I have also since flashed my Bios to F33J which is the newest version released just 2 weeks ago.  Audio still broken.

Answer 1

As it turns out, somehow these updates removed the local and network service accounts out of the admin groups.

I ran the following commands to add them back:

net localgroup Administrators /add localservice

net localgroup Administrators /add networkservice

I then went and restarted the "Windows Audio" service in services.msc

Bam, both my sound cards instantly came online.

All my audio is back online!

Answer 2

I clearly said so in my OP.

Answer 3

I have the same question and just find solution form CSDN：
Right Click on Windows Icon（LeftBottom Corner），then click “Windows PowerShell（Administrator）”，input as follow
net localgroup Administrators /add networkservice

net localgroup Administrators /add localservice

Then restart my PC，and OK.

Answer 4

Clicking on the speak opens the MS troubleshooter.  Right clicking is of course useless.

Answer 5

Thanks Carlo,

These steps did not resolve the issue.

Windows is unwilling to recognize my audio device no matter which driver I use.  Gigabyte and Realtek have actually published a newer driver that the one you linked available through the Gigabyte updater tool.  It was released 2 weeks ago and also is not recognized by windows.

It is worth mentioning that along with KB5003173, I believe Servicing Stack 10.0.19041.985 was also installed.  

I have disabled my onboard audio, and the device disappears from device manager as you might expect.  When I reenable it in bios, it reappears in the device manager.  According to device manger, windows has no issue with the drivers, but clearly, it fails to recognize then as an audio driver.  This all worked this past Friday.