Various drivers suddenly stopped working & consistently fails to install new ones

Question

This is a long one and requires a little set up to get into, so I'm sorry in advance, lol.

A day or so ago, I ran into a weird issue where my PC suddenly stopped recognizing anything plugged into any 3.5 mm port. I've tried multiple different devices and it does not recognize anything plugged into it (save for a PS4 controller via USB? It will play no audio through it and has always done this). It's acting as if nothing has been plugged into it, like ever.

I've gone into device manager to try to update my drivers, but the option to see the driver is just gone (the mic is unrelated to this issue - uninstalling does nothing and it has never caused issues before). It's acting as if there is no audio driver to begin with. It's also doing this with Bluetooth, and I cannot connect anything via Bluetooth (I instantly get the "couldn't connect" message). My first thought was to run a clean install of all the NVIDIA drivers to see if that fixed the issue. This is what I run into. It won't restart my PC, I just instantly get that message - though now it's acting as if I've uninstalled all the drivers (slow, choppy, low resolution, etc.). I've since deleted all of the drivers to no avail.

No matter what avenue I take to try to update any driver, it always wants to fail. Windows Update in the settings keeps failing (Ex 1, Ex 2). Device manager gives me one of two messages: when I try to update the graphics card, and when I try to update anything else (replace the Bluetooth icon with anything you please).

The only thing that I can think that would've caused the issue is that my PC crashed the night before? But the audio to my speakers was working the morning afterwards, before this issue began. I believe Windows tried to install an update, but when I go to find the update to reverse it, it's showing that it failed to install. I have since tried to reinstall Windows 10 and simply get a "failed to install" message.

I'm not sure where to go from here, and I'm not sure if this is an issue with Windows itself or something else. TIA!

Answer 1

Hi briiefcase,

Good day! This is Jhakesong and I will be happy to assist you with this.

I am sorry to hear about the inconvenience. In this case, the issue with windows being unable to update itself might be the cause of the issue. If the issue just happened recently a System Restore might fix the issue.

1. Click Search
2. Type restore
3. Open create a restore point
4. Click the system restore button
5. Hit Next
6. Pick a restore point (Preferably a date before the issue happened)
7. Wait for the process to finish.

If the issue has been happening for more than a couple of months and system restore is of no help, try to reset the windows update components.

Here is a guide:

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/manually-reset-w...

Check if you can download windows updates at this point and install those and do a reboot.

If you are still having the same issues at this point, run a system file fix and an image repair.

Here's how:

Run System File Checker

1. Press Windows key + S, this will open search
2. Type cmd, run command prompt as administrator
3. Enter this command and press enter: sfc /scannow
4. Wait for the process to finish and reboot your computer.
5. Check if the issue still persists.

Run windows image fix.

1. Press Windows key + S, this will open search
2. Type cmd, run command prompt as administrator
3. Enter this command and press enter: DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
4. Wait for the process to finish and reboot your computer.
5. Check if the issue still persists.

Lastly, if nothing works at this point, Do a repair upgrade of windows. Here is a guide on how to perform that:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/for...

Let me know how it goes. Have a great day!

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