For some reason that completely eluded me at the time, evey so often when the computer was booted up / restarted, the onboard RealTek device would vanish again, without any change in settings or update/installation. However, I did not get a fairytale ending to this. I eventually got a hold of a driver package that worked for the device and enjoyed 'sound' once again. The Drivers that worked for this device in Windows XP were not right for it in Windows 7. With the RealTek device now showing up in Windows 7.

(Of course I never had any problem with this in Windows XP) The only conclusion I drew from this is that because the onboard RealTek sound was an analog device, Windows 7 was possibly prioritizing the HDMI sound device the Grahpics card has over the RealTek because it actually supported a HD signal. I found that if it was set to HD Audio then my onboard RealTek device would not be detected by Windows 7, but if i changed it to the analog setting (AC97) it would show up. But there was also another setting just under it 'Front Panel Type' which had two options, 'HD Audio' and 'AC97'. Under Bios in the 'Onboard Devices Configuration' there was the 'High Definition Audio' setting, which obviously had to be Enabled. This was a tough nut for me that I encountered a couple years ago.įirst issue was getting the device to actually load, which took me to Bios.

Asrock 970 extreme3 driver pack