Realtek HD Audio conflicting with Steam Client Bootstrapper

[cjquinnrolltide]

Hi everyone,

I recently purchased a HP Envy 15T 2in1 PC. I tried to install Steam and quickly discovered that the steam client bootstrapper would fail to launch. In task manager, it would appear for maybe half a second and immediently cancel itself without sending any error reports. I ran my computer in safe mode w/ network and steam was able to launch. After doing a clean boot of the whole computer and multiple attempts at reinstalling the steam client, I discovered that when I disabled Windows Audio in Services my steam was able to load up and I was able to load some games with no issue. Well no issue except my computer cannot run audio AT ALL. Needless to say, I searched in my drivers and found that the issue lied in Realtek High Definition Audio. Whenever this is disabled, everything works great minus no audio, but whenever it is enabled my steam client cannot even launch. It says updating Steam- verifying update and then closes out immediently. So I find myself at rock and a hard place.

Thanks for taking your time to read this!

[Start_Running]

Okay that solves a mystery on my end

Originally posted by Toast:

What happens when you have RT HD Audio enabled and you launch steam with

-nochatui -nofriendsui

?

The same thing if its anything like me

[cjquinnrolltide]

Somehow my notifications for this discussion got turned off. Ultimately, Steam Support was able to tell me that I have a bad driver somewhere that is conflicting with the launch sequence. At this point, they recommended that I just keep trying to remove and update drivers. The only drivers that would affect anything were the RT audio ones, but Microsoft support (to no surprise) walked through trying to delete the drivers and update them. So neither side really knows what to do...

[Start_Running]

Have you tried redownloading the drivers from your mobo maker's home page?

[Spooky]

Really sorry for the necro but finally narrowed down an issue I'm having with source games to my Realtek drivers. Slightly different issue (cannot connect to servers with RT enabled for some reason).

I'm assuming it's a similar conflict though, so did you ever find a fix for this?

[andreasaspenberg575]

it is not so simple. the nvidia sound card is wired through the graphics card`s ports, meaning that it can only transfer sound to the monitor. if the monitor does not support audio, then you will not get sound if you use it. i myself solve that issue by having monitors with speakers.

[andreasaspenberg575]

that means that you are using the realtek sound card.