No audio in Dark Souls Prepare to Die Edition after Windows 10 Upgrade

audio-hardwaredark-soulstechnical-issueswindows 10

After upgrading to Windows 10, I no longer get any audio when playing Dark Souls.

The strange thing however, is that if I restart the game in windowed mode, audio works perfectly fine.

In full-screen, I tried alt-tabbing, checking the volume mixer, and nothing seems astray, apart from Dark Souls not outputting any audio.

I have tried all the usual troubleshooting steps (ensuring latest drivers, restarting, uninstalling the game and re-installing), but nada.

Prior to Windows 10, I had 8.1, and the game worked flawlessly.

PC specs are as follows:

Operating System: Windows 10 Home Single Language 64-bit (10.0, Build 10240) (10240.th1.150810-2333)  
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)  
      System Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard  
             System Model: HP OMEN Notebook PC 15  
                     BIOS: F.23  
                Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4710HQ CPU @ 2.50GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.5GHz  
                   Memory: 16384MB RAM  
      Available OS Memory: 16310MB RAM  
                Page File: 5259MB used, 13482MB available  
              Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS  
          DirectX Version: 12  
      DX Setup Parameters: Not found  
         User DPI Setting: Using System DPI  
       System DPI Setting: 144 DPI (150 percent)  
          DWM DPI Scaling: UnKnown  
                 Miracast: Available, with HDCP  
Microsoft Graphics Hybrid: Supported  
           DxDiag Version: 10.00.10240.16384 64bit Unicode  

-------------
Sound Devices

 Description: SONY TV (Intel(R) Display Audio)
 Default Sound Playback: Yes
 Default Voice Playback: Yes
            Hardware ID: HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_8086&DEV_2807&SUBSYS_80860101&REV_1000
        Manufacturer ID: 1
             Product ID: 100
                   Type: WDM
            Driver Name: IntcDAud.sys
         Driver Version: 6.16.0000.3154 (English)
      Driver Attributes: Final Retail
            WHQL Logo'd: Yes
          Date and Size: 4/5/2015 23:53:29, 454416 bytes
            Other Files: 
        Driver Provider: Intel(R) Corporation
         HW Accel Level: Basic
              Cap Flags: 0xF1F
    Min/Max Sample Rate: 100, 200000
Static/Strm HW Mix Bufs: 1, 0
 Static/Strm HW 3D Bufs: 0, 0
              HW Memory: 0
       Voice Management: No
 EAX(tm) 2.0 Listen/Src: No, No
   I3DL2(tm) Listen/Src: No, No
Sensaura(tm) ZoomFX(tm): No

Best Answer

Since I found out that there's something funky going on with HDMI audio, I set the headphone jack to be the default audio output device and plugged that into the TV, which got the sound working again in full screen.

Thanks for everyone's help.

Edit:

Another problem I faced was using InputMapper for my DS4 Controller as well, it refused to start in exclusive mode.

I tried the suggested fix suggested here, which didn't seem to work. I then tried unplugging the HDMI cable, and attempting the suggested fix (using the laptop's screen only), after which the controller worked again. Not only that, DaS worked flawlessly with audio in full screen as well.

It definitely seems like there has been a change in how Windows 10 handles HDMI audio/video output during startup.

I do hope that Microsoft pushes a fix for this in the future.

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