Installing Realtek audio driver.....

[Kshipper]

Not always, and on only about 50% of the new machines I build/rebuild (Maybe it's all Gigabyte boards?) when I get to the part where I run the Realtek Audio sound card driver (always obtained from the motherboard manufacturer's website). The driver will tell me that it has to uninstall the current sound card driver first, before it can install the new one. I agree: it wants the computer rebooted. I do that. When it comes back up it automatically shows the same screen and tells me it needs to uninstall the sound card driver first before it can install the new one. Huh? If I agree it will just do that again. It will do this endlessly until I click 'cancel'. Once I do that. The new driver is never installed. When I check Device Manager I see the old driver version is still there.

What I have been doing (right or wrong) is I use Device Manager and click "Update driver" and direct it to the folder where the new driver I downloaded is and it happily updates and the system seems to work fine. No stability issues. I should be happy I found a way forward.

In the back of my mind the whole thing just doesn't sit right with me. Anyone know why this is happening or have a fix that is different from to what I am doing?

 

[Macho]

Besides update driver & roll back driver there is uninstall device, disable device.
Then it looks for a driver when you boot up. That would be if your internet connection is good.
There has to be a reasonable explaination such as that. When you install the new driver you want does it look for that device you disabled or uninstalled?

 

[Kshipper]

When I build a new computer the system pulls a driver from Microsoft. The one that I download for the sound card is newer than the motherboard manufacturer. This newer drive is the one that causes the trouble (not every install tho')

If I disabled the device I am pretty sure the driver install would fail because it can't find eligible hardware. If I uninstall the sound card first the system wants to restart so it just reinstalls the sound card on the next boot up with the same driver it had.