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July 18th, 2025 16:52
XPS 8950, Realtek not allowing switching between speakers and headphones
I have an XPS 8950 running Windows 11 Pro, purchased in 2023. It has the onboard audio (Realtek ALC3861). I have powered speakers plugged into the rear speaker jack and headphones plugged into the front panel headphone jack. For most of the last 2 years, I have been able to use the system tray / quick settings to switch between speakers and headphones. In the last several months, the PC occasionally gets in a mode where the indicated sound output says speakers but the audio only goes to headphones. The only way to switch to speakers is to unplug the headphones. When I want to use headphones I have to plug them back in. This can be fixed by reinstalling the Realtek driver (which first removes the existing driver). The driver I have been loading is the same as what I already had loaded, but somehow going through this process (Realtek driver removal/reinstallation) fixes the problem. This is annoying and time-consuming because the problems crops back up frequently. Any suggestions/remedies for what is causing this?
the bbdude
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July 25th, 2025 18:49
Now I can't even to get back the ability to electronically switch between speakers and headphones by reloading the driver. Just wondering if maybe some BIOS setting might fix this. As mentioned above, I use the onboard Realtek audio to drive my powered speakers and my headphones via their separate rear and front (respectively) dedicated jacks. I also have an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 10GB graphics card, which I believe can supply audio via its HDMI output, though I have never used this for audio. Maybe there is some conflict between there 2 audio sources? If so, can the HDMI audio be disabled in BIOS?