Lost sound on laptop - help please

searchlight123

HP Envy - windows 10 - around 1 year old.
my own fault!

i ran a program called 'snail driver' which checks and updates outdated drivers on your pc. it detected 3 drivers to update. i'm sure 2 of them were sound drivers. one was Realtek and i cannot remember the other one although i know it was a different name to realtek. they were large files around 240mb i believe.

since the update i have no sound at all from my laptop. speaker icon in system tray shows it's on but no sound. tried a system restore twice. first time after failing after around 30 minutes it said couldn't restore, try turning off your anti virus (defender). did that but same failure report at the end of it.

any ideas in simple language as to how i can restore my sounds would be very much appreciated.
the sound does work thru headphones but not thru the laptop's external speaker.

many thanks.

indesisiv

Go into the device manager and remove your current sound card drivers. Then let it scan again and hopefully install the correct ones.

searchlight123

indesisiv wrote: »

Go into the device manager and remove your current sound card drivers. Then let it scan again and hopefully install the correct ones.

thanks for reply
do you mean remove the drivers and let snail driver install the correct ones or to shut down the laptop and let windows find them on restart?

many thanks again.

AndyPix

tonygold wrote: »

let snail driver

Noooooooooo


Immediately remove this from your computer.
3rd party programs have no business poking around in your drivers as you have found out !!


Remove snail driver, scan for the malware that it has inevitebly installed alongside its self
And do as above.
Remove the drivers and reboot your computer

DoaM

And when removing the (sound) drivers, select the option to uninstall them too. Then reboot and when you start up Windows should detect the "new" hardware and go find suitable drivers.

searchlight123

many thanks indicisiv, andy and doam
i followed your collective instructions and all is back to normal soundwise.
did a scan with malwarebytes and no threats detected, (i also uninstalled snail driver!) so thanks again guys.
this really is a great forum.
merry crimbo.