Win10 issue question?

[Faderjockey]

In the middle of mixing a album..
PC has now decided to boot with no audio.. the speaker icon has red X.
I can mess around in Device Manager and get it going after a few tries or rebooting several times. Started about a week ago.

So I'm running Win10 on Gigabyte Z170Z with 7700K
Apollo 16mkII Thunderbolt.

When this happens I finally get it going the Red X will go away..but only way then for Thunderbolt to be seen is shut all the way down the boot up again. But today I came in to work on mix and BAM! starting off with no audio again.

Would like to know how to get back to Win10 looking for it's audio then knowing to grab the Thunderbolt like before.. I also run Sonarworks plugin and System all. Which also won't show up when there's no audio.. once audio is back then Sonarworks System all appears and works fine then.

[rMidi]

I had this issue a while ago.
Windows 10 Z170Z 7700K with an Asus thunderbolt III card.

I cannot remember exactly what the issue was but it had to do with how power (BUSS) was being removed from the Thunderbolt card.

- I Do not turn off my Audio interface connected to the Thunderbolt buss.
- Shut down PC.
- Power my Audio Interface Off.
- Power of my UPS (Everything is powered by this).
- *If I did not have a UPS I would probably find that I would need to pull the power socket on the PC to make sure the BUSS is in no way powered.

If I do not shut down like above the next time I boot the Thunderbolt card will not boot (No Audio).

Though are Thunderbolt cards are different they are no doubt utilizing the same chipset.

Hope this helps.

[maralatho]

I don't have any Thunderbolt devices, but with USB devices it's a good idea to uncheck "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" in Device Manager. Double-click the Thunderbolt device name and go to its Power Management tab if there is one. The option would be in there.

[Faderjockey]

USB already has that off.. I'm all setup there..

Thunderbolt has been fine since I built this machine over year ago.
It's the new Win10 update sucks.. I went thru did the UA recommended uninstall all drivers and software reinstalled.. Of course it worked fine..

but next day I come to studio boot and I'm not getting red X on volume just getting
my Nvidia audio driver (which I had disabled) and it's trying to see my Samsung TV as audio which I use as a Second monitor for UA console.

reboot or dig around and then PC will see Thunderbolt..then I usually have to shut all the way dawn then boot again and then UA Apollo shows up..
So it's Win10 not grabbing the Thunderbolt on boot. annoying!!

[rMidi]

Absolutely reeks of what I went through.


Initially (when I first was installing the card) I had to tear it down several times (remove driver, remove card. Boot. Shutdown. Add card, Add Drivers,....Repeat). Took two days.

For about a week I went through what you are going through until I arrived at my power down sequence. It has been 9 months now and my machines sees the Thunderbolt card on every boot unless I blow my power down sequence.

I just thought of something, 'Fast Boot' is really problematic with the Thunderbolt buss. I do not use fast boot. (See USB below).

I am not sure what a Windows 10 update could have possible changed other than the
boot order of your kernel mode drivers. I would be running a boot log. When I got a boot log that worked I would save it. When I get a boot that fails I would compare the two boot logs.

It is possible I suppose that the Windows 10 update has configured your machine to keep power applied to the USB ports when shut down
I am assuming that you have not touched the BIOS (plenty of relevant Thunderbolt setting there). If you have I would double check the BIOS settings.

USB:
I am not sure what brand/model your Thunderbolt card is. All Thunderbolt cards I am aware of are based on USB-C. So you PC will see parts of your Thunderbolt Interface on the USB Buss. Are your USB ports staying powered after you shut down? Do not believe any of the setting you have in Win10, plug something into the USB ports to see if they are powered after shut down. If so your Thunderbolt card is probably
staying powered.

[Faderjockey]

It's not a card.. My thunderbolt bolt 3 is built into Gigabyte z170x MB.

So what's working today I'll need to test more. I've been having this issue more since this project I've been tracking is now at mixing stage.. This project is 32but 96k..

I always end up flipping back to 44.1 if I wanted to play something off YouTube or whatever. But usually I'm done for day I power down go home next day come back deal with this.. But now I tried leaving yesterday with Apollo set to 44.1 before I shutdown.. When I booted today was totally fine.. Need to test more but wondering if Win10 configuration right now can't grab my thunderbolt set to 96k as default system audio.

And note I touched everything.. This is like the 6th audio PC I built.. This one has just been weird with newer Win10.. My win7s were more stable but can't run thunderbolt on that.. And I sold my RME pci card that was connected to my SSL interface when that thing just died out of no where.