External sound stopped working, UD-160-A

Sometime within the last couple of weeks, my external speakers and headphones that are plugged into the UD-160-A have stopped working. The internal speakers work, as do the headphones when plugged directly into the laptop, so I know it’s not a sound card issue. Everything else about the UD-160-A seems to work normally, except for the external sound. The external speakers have power.

In addition, I just upgraded to the Windows 10 Fall Developers Update a couple of days ago, and I now receive the message that the device has been removed (although the driver and device remain listed in the Device Manager). The message sends me to this page: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/h…. It’s unclear exactly what was removed, since the dock still works for everything but sound.

I have downloaded the most recent driver, uninstalled and reinstalled the driver, but that did not solve the problem. I also uninstalled, rebooted, and let Windows reinstall, but that also did not solve it. The external speakers are set to default.

Thanks…

Yes, the internal speakers are working. The headphones also work when plugged directly into the laptop.

Hello CPE1704TKS,

Thanks for reaching out to us on our forums, and I apologize for the sound issue you’re having with your Plugable UD-160-A Docking Station! Based off the description, it may help to either try and reinstall the driver for the audio chip of the dock if you haven’t done so already. I suspect the driver you previously installed was either for the USB or display related chips, rather than the audio one. Steps on this are below:

  1. Leave the docking station connected and navigate to Device Manager (if you’re uncertain how to do this, press the Windows key + R and type devmgmt.msc in the window that pops up)

  2. Expand the section for Sound, Video, and Game Controllers.

  3. Right click on the entry for USB Multimedia Audio Device (this will be the docking station’s audio chip) and select Uninstall. If prompted, check the box to delete the drivers from your computer.

  4. Once the uninstall is complete, disconnect and reconnect the docking station. Windows should now setup the device fresh, once that completes test things out!

Let me know if those steps help, but if not we can continue looking into it! If you can leave everything connected and run our debug tool, we should be able to get some idea of what’s going wrong. Could you run it and email us with the .zip it generates (assuming the issue is still happening)? Please send the logs to support@plugable.com and reference Ticket #208576 in the subject line to ensure the logs make their way to me.

Here’s how: http://plugable.com/support/plugdebug

Let me know if you have any questions, and I look forward to working with you on this issue!

Regards,

Patrick
Plugable Technologies
www.plugable.com/support

Hi Patrick, thanks for getting back to me. The procedure didn’t work – I still have no sound through either the external USB speakers or the headphones when plugged into the Plugable. I’ll email you the zip file shortly.