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What we are seeing in Support
With the release of any new Windows build, there can be some quirks that need to be ironed out. Those quirks often come out in the form of driver issues. We are seeing a couple of audio driver-related issues pop up in Support related to 1803, and below you can find some quick fixes on how to address these.
Find out which Windows build you have
You can check your build version of Windows within the operating system itself. To find out your Build number, click on the Start button, and type in the words "winver" like so:
Once you click on the "winver" command, you will see this screen showing you which Windows version (aka build) you have:
Creative Driver Issues
With your build number in mind, we will start with the Creative audio card issue. We have had a few cases where the Creative Sound Blaster Z failed to pass audio through any ports, as well as a couple of cases where the audio card is no longer a listed Playback Device after updating to Windows build 1803.
To resolve this, please head to the Creative Support Site and update your driver to the most recent version found here (Marked March 2017) as seen below:
Updating this driver should bring your card up-to-date with Build 1803 and the card should show up as a Playback Device again.
Realtek HD Audio Issues
The other issue we have seen popping up lately is a bit more unusual We were able to reproduce an odd bug where a machine using only the Realtek onboard audio card would stop sending audio through the Line Out port when there was a pending update from Build 1709 to Build 1803. We are unsure about previous builds, but the issue seems to be specific to the update between these two builds specifically when updates are set to be deferred. In each situation we have seen so far, Windows Updates were deferred for 365 days.
Please note: Puget Systems does not set updates to defer by default, so privacy adjustments or Windows tweaks may be the cause of the deferred updates.
Allowing Windows to proceed with the update to 1803 has resolved the issue each time so far.
Further Updates Pending
We will update this article when we have more information pertaining to audio issues we have come across so far. There are also rumors of a pending Creative update for Windows 10, so once we see this roll out we can do some additional testing.
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Looking for more support guides?
If you are looking for a solution to a problem you are having with your PC, we also have a number of other support guides that may be able to assist you with other issues.