Background: During the Spring Festival this year, I wanted to cast my PC screen to the TV because the remote control for my home’s internet set-top box was acting up. After disconnecting the setup, I found that my PC’s sound card had disappeared. Neither installing drivers nor reinstalling the OS fixed the issue. Testing with Linux revealed that the sound card’s codec chip was faulty; repairing it would have required replacing the motherboard, so I decided not to fix it.
How was it resolved?
Initially: I used headphones with a built-in sound card or software like “PC Audio Stream to Phone” as a temporary workaround, though this was often inconvenient.
Finally: I accidentally discovered that plugging a USB-C to 3.5mm audio adapter into the PC allowed it to be recognized as an audio device—though the adapter’s DAC chip did get quite hot.