The speaker icon in the Taskbar’s notification area may appear with a red cross. When you hover the mouse pointer, it may say, “The Audio Service is not running.”
Launching the Volume Mixer by running Sndvol.exe would show the following error:
No audio device is installed
Error “The Audio Service is not running” in Windows
To restore the audio playback functionality on your Windows 10 computer, start the Windows Audio service:
- Click Start, type
services.mscin the Start Search box. - Scroll down the list of services, right-click Windows Audio, and select Start.
- Select Properties for Windows Audio and set its Startup Type to Automatic.
- In the Log On tab, make sure that “Log on as:” is set to “Local Service”.
In some cases, the Windows Audio service may not start, and you get one of the following errors:
Windows could not start the Windows Audio service on Local Computer. Error 1075: The dependency service does not exist or has been marked for deletion.
(or)
Error 1068: The dependency service or group failed to start
To resolve the issue, ensure that the Windows Audio Endpoint Builder service is started and set to Automatic start.
Note that on pre-Windows 10 systems, the Windows Audio service depends on the following services to start:
- Plug and Play
- Multimedia Class Scheduler
- Windows Audio Endpoint Builder
Windows Audio Endpoint Builder Service is missing?
It appears that the Windows Audio Endpoint Builder service goes missing in the Services MMC (services.msc) on some systems for unknown reasons. The user may have inadvertently deleted the service. As a result, the Windows Audio service wouldn’t start.
To resolve the issue, reinstate the Windows Audio Endpoint Builder service on Windows 10 using the following registry fix:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 ; Restores the Windows Audio Endpoint Builder service on Windows 10 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\AudioEndpointBuilder] "Description"="@%SystemRoot%\\System32\\AudioEndpointBuilder.dll,-205" "DisplayName"="@%SystemRoot%\\system32\\AudioEndpointBuilder.dll,-204" "ErrorControl"=dword:00000001 "FailureActions"=hex:80,51,01,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,03,00,00,00,14,00,00,\ 00,01,00,00,00,60,ea,00,00,01,00,00,00,c0,d4,01,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00 "Group"="AudioGroup" "ImagePath"=hex(2):25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,6f,00,6f,00,\ 74,00,25,00,5c,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,73,\ 00,76,00,63,00,68,00,6f,00,73,00,74,00,2e,00,65,00,78,00,65,00,20,00,2d,00,\ 6b,00,20,00,4c,00,6f,00,63,00,61,00,6c,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,\ 00,4e,00,65,00,74,00,77,00,6f,00,72,00,6b,00,52,00,65,00,73,00,74,00,72,00,\ 69,00,63,00,74,00,65,00,64,00,20,00,2d,00,70,00,00,00 "ObjectName"="LocalSystem" "RequiredPrivileges"=hex(7):53,00,65,00,43,00,68,00,61,00,6e,00,67,00,65,00,4e,\ 00,6f,00,74,00,69,00,66,00,79,00,50,00,72,00,69,00,76,00,69,00,6c,00,65,00,\ 67,00,65,00,00,00,00,00 "ServiceSidType"=dword:00000001 "Start"=dword:00000002 "Type"=dword:00000020 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\AudioEndpointBuilder\Parameters] "ServiceDll"=hex(2):25,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,52,00,6f,00,6f,\ 00,74,00,25,00,5c,00,53,00,79,00,73,00,74,00,65,00,6d,00,33,00,32,00,5c,00,\ 41,00,75,00,64,00,69,00,6f,00,45,00,6e,00,64,00,70,00,6f,00,69,00,6e,00,74,\ 00,42,00,75,00,69,00,6c,00,64,00,65,00,72,00,2e,00,64,00,6c,00,6c,00,00,00 "ServiceDllUnloadOnStop"=dword:00000001
- Copy the above contents to Notepad.
- Save the file with .reg extension — e.g.,
audioendpoint_service.reg - Double-click the registry file to apply the settings to the registry. Click Yes when prompted for confirmation.
- Open the
C:\Windows\System32folder and verify if the fileAudioEndpointBuilder.dllexists. If it doesn’t, you may need to run DISM and SFC to restore the file.AudioEndpointBuilder.dllis the DLL for the Windows Audio Endpoint Builder service. - Restart Windows for the changes to take effect.
The audio functionality should have been restored now!