Audio malfunction on HP Spectre laptop

Hi,

I have an unsolvable issue with the audio on my HP Spectre X360 - 13-Ap0001nc laptop with Windows 10 for the last two months. It was working well for long time, but suddenly it completely stopped working. No sound, no microphone function, the icon on the taskbar was saying, there are no audio devices.

I've tried to update the drivers, uninstall them and then tried reinstalling a variety of different ones. I've tried it manually, with the hp assistant app, also with the driver booster app and when I finally got rid of that "no audio devices found" problem, there is a driver which is appearing to be working, but the sound and microphone are still not functional.

I've also tried to perform a power reset, bios reset, updated all the other drivers and also the Windows. Also tried a bunch of older drivers, but any of those drivers worked.

My guess is, that the problem is the Intel(R) Smart Sound Technology (Intel(R) SST) OED driver with the hardware id INTELAUDIO\DSP_CTLR_DEV_9DC8&VEN_8086&DEV_0222&SUBSYS_8514103C&REV_0030, because it was showing the exclamation mark all the time, but the exclamation mark suddenly disappeared after I performed the bios and the power reset, but still without working audio. I would really like to update it with the driver on this page: HPSBHF03659 rev. 4 - Intel® Smart Sound Technology March 2020 Security Update | HP® Customer Support, but the links are not functional anymore.

Also is there any way to try if the hardware is working properly to make sure it's a software problem, before I am going to try to reinstall the Windows? I've already tried the Windows safe mode and also a bootable Linux, but without a change.

I've already tried to solve this problem on the official HP support forum, but their solutions are from my knowledge quite limited because of the company policies.
Thanks to their technician I've installed two official drivers and also tried to download some optional driver updates from windows update service, but without a change.
Link to the full thread here: Re: Audio is not working - HP Support Community - 8556947

I would really hate to lose all of my installed software and would prefer to solve it with another way than reinstalling my OS.

Thank you for your help and support.

 

Only thing I would suggest is backup your system. Then do a reset of windows or a clean install of windows. Or...use a USB sound dongle.