I recently bought a new computer. It has headset connectors in the front. A pink one for the microphone, and a green one for the headphones. Just like a laptop. Sweet... until you try to use it. Apparently this machine has a "Realtek HD Audio" system that is absolutely crazy.

While setting up the machine I didn't have speakers plugged in; rather I was just using a simple audio headset to listen to streaming audio, and take part in the periodic Skype call. My daughter has a little battery-powered stereo speaker that she uses to listen to her iPod with when she isn't in an earbud mood. I asked her to bring it to me. I pulled the headphone plug out and plugged the speaker into the front panel audio jack... and the music died.

No amount of tweaking the audio settings could get it back, although Winamp's little bar graph indicated that the music was still alive in there somewhere. A reboot was in order.

Unfortunately, after the reboot the sound was still somehow disabled; although all settings were right. It took a hard-reset (Power off, switch off the power supply and toggle the PC Power switch in order to discharge the mainboard's residual power.) in order to get the machine working again. Finally the machine came up and made sound. Unfortunately every time I unplugged something from the front panel audio jack, the same thing would happen again.

I called EVGA, the manufacturer of the mainboard in my system, and actually got an english speaking, American with no discernable accent and real technical knowledge! It sounded like he might have been in Denver, or Chicago, or Iowa!

I could tell he was actually listening, thinking, and troubleshooting with his actual brain ... not reading from a script and regurgitating canned, disjointed 'answers' in hopes that I would eventually get annoyed and hang up. Moreover, he answered the phone in less than five minutes! I was stunned.

He walked me through some debugging and determined that I had a bios that was two revisions out of date, so I downloaded the new bios. He also suggested I go to the Realtek site to get the latest reference drivers for the audio device. In less than ten minutes of dialing the phone, I had real answers from a real person with real technical knowledge! EVGA boards may be a little more than their competitor, but WOW! What service! I'll never buy an Asus or Abit or Chaintech, or DFI, or Biostar, or HP or Dell ... again! I am an EVGA customer for life!

I flashed the bios and installed the latest drivers, and tried again. This time, I got the dumbest piece of useless information I have ever gotten from a computer. When I unplugged the heaphones, a flash-popup came up and said, ...

Well, thanks Mr. Computer. Did it hurt?

I realize some computer users sport less than what should be the minimum amount of intelligence required to operate a toaster, but is the computer telling me everything I am doing, really useful?

   "you just pressed the 'y' key."
   "you just pressed the 'o' key."
   "you just pressed the 'u' key."
   "you just pressed the ' ' key."
   "you just pressed the 'j' key."
   "you just pressed the 'u' key."
   "you just pressed the 's' key."    "That was a lot of typing. It may be time for a break."

Just plain stupid. But the real gem was when I plugged the headphones back in and was greeted with this beauty of a dialog...

Yeah! That's right... "What device did you just plug in?" Well, Sherlock. I plugged it into the color-coded headphone jack in the front of the computer. Perhaps it was a, ... hmm, HEADPHONE!?!?

Apparently my sound device has the ability to re-task all of the jacks on the machine. Color coding means nothing. Um... how long did it take what team of idiots to come up with this TOTALLY USELESS PIECE OF $#!* TECHNOLOGY??, and why are my audio jacks still color-coded? But the most important question is... WHY IS THIS CRAZY SETTING THE DEFAULT?!?!?

Well, if you came here from a Google search that hit on some keywords in this article, and you have read this far thinking to yourself, "YES! This is the EXACT problem I am having!"; then here is how to make your ill-designed Realtek audio device work with some semblance of sanity.

I am using Vista 64-bit Ultimate, so the instructions may vary a little for you.

• Click the start button and select "Control Panel"
• On the left pane, select "Classic View"
• You should have an applet called "Realtek HD Audio Manager". Click it and you will get something that looks like this...

 
I just want to stomp the stuffing out of that stupid smiling crab in the bottom-left corner.

• In the top-right corner, click on "Device Advanced Settings". You should see this window. 

• Select "Separate all input jacks as independent input devices" and click [ok] to close the window.
  
• Then right click on the green, "Front Panel" jack and select "Connector Retasking".

• De-select the checkbox next to "Enable auto popup dialog, when device has been plugged in" and click [ok] to close the window.

Now, your Realtek device will behave like a productive member of society. When you plug a headphone into the front panel "headphone" jack, it will disable any speakers plugged into the rear panel and assume you know what you are doing. Later, when you unplug said headhones, it will re-enable the normal speakers. Who said Windows was easier than Linux?

Shame on you Realtek.