So I have been using my computer for a while now. Its a pc I built myself with Vista Ultimate, and the motherboard has Realtek HD Audio. I had been using the soundcard for a while now without driver, but I decided I needed to plug in more than one speaker system so I installed the drivers and the Audio Manager. When the computer rebooted the Audio Manager was running but the speaker icon says: Volume 0 Speakers Realtek High Definition Audio but next to the icon is the white x in the red circle and when you right click open volume mixer it says no audio device is installed. Also important: the computer froze the first two times i tried to install the driver so I did a hard shutdown both times.
have a look here.. http://sound-drivers.org/ the soundcard itself might be faulty.. it's not unknown.
I have the drivers from the manufacter and it worked just fine before i installed the drivers, i just didnt have the audio manager like i wanted. I ended up uninstalling the drivers and it made no difference. then i put in a sound card that has always worked with XP and 2000 with drivers included in windows but vista cant find them. then i reinstalled the realtek drivers and the problem persisted. I blame microsoft but i always blame either microsoft or nintendo so it doesnt really mean anything