


I still can't find the realtek hd audio manager though, and the headset is still "speakers" and "microphone" in playback and recording devices. I feel pretty silly, I guess the audio driver had just not installed/refreshed itself properly, so that the pop up was hidden or was told not to pop up again from previous sessions. I checked headset, and now it is working! I finally got the pop up from realtek, asking what type of device i had just plugged in.

Then, I unplugged the headset, all my audio drivers back to working order, and plugged them in again. My headset was plugged in the whole time. If you are using Realtek HD Audio, I would suggest you to try these steps and check if it helps. It restarted the laptop once to uninstall, then asked for another restart to complete installation. Method 1: All you need to do is Open Realtek, Click the little folder on the top right hand side next to 'Analog' and check the box that says 'Enable Pop-UP. Once you’re there, scroll down to Sound, video and game. For my laptop, the download was from here To do this, go to the Device Manager by either right clicking the start button or typing device manager into the start menu. Here are some of the reasons why the Realtek headphones are not detected or working: Outdated, corrupt, or incompatible drivers These cases can lead to issues with the headphones, but it’s usually the outdated drivers to blame. Instead of manually uninstalling the audio driver in device manager, i simply retried downloading the audio driver from my laptop's product support and let it uninstall the driver itself to reinstall. Okay, it has finally worked after another reinstallation! I'll just post this in case anyone else is having the same problem at all.
