The company says the culprit is a bad Intel driver

Oct 13, 2018 07:02 GMT  ·  By

Earlier today, Microsoft confirmed a bug causing BSODs on Windows 10 version 1809 and 1803, and now the company returns with another announcement regarding an issue hitting the same two OS versions.

In a post on the company’s Community forums, a Microsoft moderator reveals that a number of systems were offered a bad Intel update that broke down the sound. The post also indicates that a similar issue was spotted on Windows 10 April 2018 Update too.

“Earlier this week, Intel accidentally released version 9.21.00.3755 of the Intel Smart Sound Technology (ISST) Driver through Windows Update, and mistakenly offered it to a range of devices running Window 10 version 1803 or 1809. If your device contained a compatible audio driver, the new driver overrode it and caused audio to stop working,” the message reads.

Drivers already blocked on Windows Update

The moderator goes on to explain that Microsoft has also blocked the update on Windows Update, and they recommend users to manually remove the audio driver to restore the sound in Windows 10.

“As soon as we learned of the issue on October 11, we made the sure the driver was no longer being offered through Windows Update. If it was already installed on your device, you will need to uninstall the driver,” the moderator explains.

Uninstalling the driver doesn’t seem to resolve the problem for all users. Alternatively, you can try our workaround detailed here.

At this point, it’s not clear how many systems were impacted. The number of computers running Windows 10 version 1809 is believed to be small given that Microsoft pulled the update shortly after its release due to a major issue causing data loss.

On the other hand, Windows 10 April 2018 Update (version 1803) is currently the number one Windows 10 version, running on nearly 90 percent of all machines upgraded to Microsoft’s latest operating system.