Hoping a pc tech out there can help me.

My Sony Duo 11 laptop running Windows 10 has suddenly stopped playing audio, with a little red cross on the speaker “No speakers or headphones are plugged in.”  Troubleshooting says “audio services not responding”

Under playback devices, only HDMI shows up – there are no speakers.

After searching the web, I have tried the following.

I have downloaded and reinstalled the Realtek HD audio driver from Sony, but to no avail.

I have tried every option under device manager – eg, rollback, uninstall, disable etc – but to no avail.

I have checked the services settings for Windows audio, all look ok.

One thing did briefly bring back the audio. I did the following:  Go to C:\Program Files\Realtek. Here you will find a folder named "audio". Rightclick this folder, select "properties" > Security tab > "Advanced" > "Change Permissions" > "Disable inheritance". Then select the SYSTEM permission and click "Remove".

After doing this, and reinstalling the driver – all was good, but only until my next reboot, then the problem came back. So at least I know it’s not a hardware issue, there is audio lurking around somewhere.

My last ditch solution is to reinstall the original Sony drivers back to factory default and Windows 8 and then follow the Windows 10 upgrade, but this is last resort only.

So hoping a techie out there will have some thoughts? Many thanks in advance.