Dana's Mixed Bag

Back when Vista SP1 came out, I had trouble getting the Realtek sound on my Intel DG33BU motherboard to work. My speaker in the tray had a red “X” through it, but the drivers didn’t seem to have any problems. When I tried to automatically upgrade the sound driver, it told me that I had the most up-to-date driver available. I kept getting a message saying that the speakers were not plugged in. Lo and behold, as I have found in almost every case, the few problems I had in Vista have not been corrected with Windows 7.  Hopefully the Googlebot will pick this up and help others with Intel Realtek sound problems in Windows 7.

I was able to get the sound working in Windows 7 by disabling the front panel jack detection. The way you do it isn’t intuitive. First download and install the latest audio drivers from Intel’s website (here is the link for the DG33BU). Then:

• Open Windows 7’s Control Panel (Start| Control Panel)
• Open the "Realtek Audio Manager" (not to be confused with “Sound”). (In order to display this, be sure that "View By" in the upper right shows "Large Icons" instead of "Category"
• In the navigation bar in the far right, there is a little yellow folder icon. It is just below “Device advanced settings” and above “ANALOG”. Click the folder icon.
• Click “Disable front panel jack detection” so that a yellow check mark shows up. Hit “OK”, and close the Realtek HD Audio Manager. That should re-enable the sound.

Tags: Tech // 3 Comments »