Fix: Realtek Audio Manager won’t Open or Cannot find Realtek Audio Manager

If you have Realtek Audio drivers installed on your system then you will also have Realtek Audio Manager on your device as well. Realtek Audio Manager provides different options for changing the sound settings. However, there are cases where you won’t be able to open the Realtek Audio Manager. This can happen to anyone and you don’t have to make a specific change to cause this. Users who bought a new computer or installed the Windows (and installed Realtek Drivers) are usually the victim of this problem but it isn’t specific to that set of users. In this issue, you won’t be able to find the Realtek Audio Manager. It won’t appear on the system tray or in the Control Panel or in the Task Manager. For some, it might appear in one of these places but they won’t be able to open it. Even if you go to the location where the Realtek Audio Manager executable file is located, double-clicking the file will not open anything. So, the bottom line is that you won’t see the Realtek Audio Manager anywhere on the system and, if you do see the Realtek Audio Manager, opening it (double-clicking) will not do anything.

The most common culprit behind this is the drivers. If your drivers didn’t install properly or your drivers got corrupted then your Realtek Audio Manager can behave like this. In some cases, a driver update or a Windows update might have caused this issue.

Tips

• Sometimes, the issue might be with the Windows and Microsoft releases new updates every month with various little fixes. So, make sure you have installed all the Windows updates. Once your system has installed all the Windows Updates, reboot and check if the problem is fixed or not
• If you simply cannot locate the Realtek Audio Manager and wondering how to open it then do the following
  1. Hold Windows key and press R
  2. Type C:\Program Files\Realtek\Audio\HDA\ and press Enter
  3. Locate and double click the file .exe
  4. This should open the Realtek Audio Manager for you. If this works for you then simply right click the exe file and select Create shortcut. Move this shortcut to the desktop. This will make it easier for you to run it.

Method 1: Uninstall and Reinstall the Drivers

This problem is usually related to faulty or corrupted drivers. So, uninstalling and letting Windows reinstall the drivers will resolve the issue.

1. Hold Windows key and press R
2. Type devmgmt.msc and press Enter

3. Locate and double click Sound, video and game controllers
4. Right-click your Realtek high definition audio device
5. Select Uninstall and confirm any additional prompts

6. Once the driver is uninstalled, click Action from the top menu bar
7. Select Scan for hardware changes

This should reinstall the drivers and fix the issue.

Note: If it doesn’t resolve the issue then repeat the steps given above and skip steps 6 and 7. Once you uninstall the driver, reboot the system and check if that fixes your problem.

Method 2: Repair Realtek Audio Manager

Repairing the Realtek Audio Manager from the Control Panel also rectifies this issue. Here are the steps for repairing Realtek Audio Manager

1. Hold Windows key and press R
2. Type appwiz.cpl and press Enter.

   

3. Locate and select Realtek Audio Manager
4. Click Repair and follow the on-screen instructions. If you don’t see a Repair button then click Uninstall (or Uninstall/Change) button. A new window will open and you should see a Repair option in that window. Select Repair and click Next. Follow any additional on-screen instructions.

Once the manager is repaired, you should be good to go.

Method 3: Microsoft Troubleshooters

Microsoft provides its own troubleshooters that fix small issues. These aren’t the most efficient troubleshooters but it takes a couple of minutes to scan via these troubleshooters. So, try to run these audio and hardware related troubleshooters to see if they resolve the issue.

1. Hold Windows key and press R
2. Type control.exe /name Microsoft.Troubleshooting and press Enter

3. Select Hardware and Sound

4. Select Hardware and Devices

5. Click Advanced

6. Check the option Apply repairs automatically
7. Click Next and follow the on-screen instructions

Check if this resolves the issue.

Method 4: Update the Drivers

Downloading the drivers from the Realtek website has resolved the issue for a lot of users as well. So, download and install the latest drivers from the Realtek website.

Here are the steps for downloading and installing the Realtek drivers

1. Click here and select the High Definition Audio Codecs (Software) option

2. Check the option I accept to the above
3. Click Next

4. Download the drivers suitable for your Windows version

5. Once the drivers are downloaded, double click to run the file and follow the on-screen instructions.

The problem should go away after the successful installation of drivers.

Method 5: Rollback Drivers

If you started experiencing this issue after you updated the drivers then the problem might be the latest version of the driver. A lot of the times the newer version has some kind of bug that causes these type of issues. There is an option in the device manager that lets you roll back to the previous version of the driver. The steps for rolling back your drivers are given below

1. Hold Windows key and press R
2. Type devmgmt.msc and press Enter

3. Locate and double click Sound, video and game controllers
4. Double click your sound card driver
5. Select the Driver tab and keep it open.

6. Click the button Roll Back Driver… and follow the on-screen instructions. If this option is greyed out then there isn’t anything that you can do. The only option you have is to uninstall the drivers and let the Windows install the drivers automatically. For this, go to method 1.

Method 6: Install Drivers from Microsoft Update Catalog

If you started to experience the problem after installing the Windows update then this method will fix the issue. There are so many cases where a Windows Update introduces a bug that causes an issue with drivers or other apps. So, installing the drivers from the Microsoft Update Catalog will fix this problem.

Here are the steps for downloading and installing the drivers

1. Click https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=6.0.1.8328 and download the version most suitable for you. Simply click the Download button in front of the option that is suited for you

2. A new window will open. Click on the link given in that window and save the file

3. Navigate to the location where you want to extract the contents of the file. Right-click anywhere on the empty space and select New then select Folder. Name this folder whatever you want and press Enter
4. Right-click the downloaded file and select Extract files…
5. Click Browse and select the location where you want to extract the contents of the file. This should be the folder that you created in step 3.
6. Click Ok
7. Now, you need to disconnect the internet. This is because we will uninstall the old drivers and we don’t want the Windows to reinstall the drivers for us. We want to install the drivers we downloaded manually.
8. Hold Windows key and press R
9. Type ncpa.cpl and press Enter

10. Right-click your internet connection and select Disable or Connect/Disconnect option

11. Hold Windows key and press R
12. Type devmgmt.msc and press Enter to open the Device Manager.

13. Locate and double click Sound, video and game controllers
14. Right-click your Realtek high definition audio device
15. Select Uninstall and confirm any additional prompts

16. Reboot
17. Wait for the Windows to start up again. Hold Windows key and press R
18. Type devmgmt.msc and press Enter

19. Locate and double click Sound, video and game controllers
20. Right-click your Realtek high definition audio device
21. Select Update Driver Software…

22. Select Browse my computer for driver software

23. Click Browse and navigate to the location of the folder that has the contents of the downloaded driver. Select this folder and click Open

24. Click Next and follow any additional on-screen instructions.

Once the drivers are installed, restart the system and you should be good to go. You can enable the internet and everything should be working normally.

Method 7: Install the Driver from the available drivers

If nothing else worked for you then you might try this. There is an option in the device manager that lets you install the drivers from the list of drivers available on your machine. You will be able to see the Realtek Audio Drivers on this list. Installing the drivers this way has resolved the issue for some people. So, if nothing else worked then try this way of updating the drivers.

Here are the complete steps for updating the drivers from the list of available drivers

1. Hold Windows key and press R
2. Type devmgmt.msc and press Enter

3. Locate and double click Sound, video and game controllers
4. Right-click your Realtek high definition audio device
5. Select Update Driver Software…

6. Select Browse my computer for driver software

7. Select Let me pick from a list of available drivers on my computer

8. Select Realtek High Definition Audio and click Next. Follow any additional on-screen instructions.
9. Once done, reboot