Borked Windows 10 Update 2020-08-31: Reset Sound Settings

Borked Windows 10 Update 2020-08-31

I’ve decided to open a recurrent series “Borked Windows Update” to narrate my adventures with broken Windows updates. In the 2 years I’ve been using Windows 10 (had to upgrade because Windows 7 was nearing end of life), I personally faced about 5 major-breaking updates, including one that made the desktop unbootable and the only fix was to reinstall the OS from DVD.

Today Monday 31th August, the Windows update popup showed up. To upgrade now or not to upgrade, that is the question?

I clicked upgrade while I went for a walk in the park, major decision factor here because it’s not uncommon for updates to take hour(s) to complete.

Reboot & Update…

Sound was borked!

• Default sound output was changed… to the display speakers.
• Volume was reset to 100.
• Equalizer settings were erased (for all sound devices).

Found out upon opening a Youtube music video… that played out a horribly loud horribly distorted sound, scaring my wife and I.

For context, there happens to be 2 main sound devices, the regular speakers (expected) and shitty embedded speakers in the display. The later are never used and disabled but can never be truly disconnected because the HDMI/DisplayPort cable to the display carries audio as well as the video.

Today we learned that the display speakers do have the hell of a punch when turned on by surprise on full volume.

Why would a Windows update mess up all sounds settings? No idea.