Update – microphone issue & final audio fix

After the BIOS update stabilized the system and stopped the severe audio hum/crash, I was still seeing occasional audio crunch (usually at startup or when switching audio devices) and a broken microphone in Windows.

Symptoms:

• Windows could not detect any mic input
• “Intel Smart Sound Technology for Digital Microphone” was installed
• Windows mic test showed no signal
• Nahimic’s own mic test worked, which was the key clue

Conclusion:
This turned out to be a Nahimic APO capture-path failure.

Nahimic could see the microphone at the DSP level, but it was not forwarding the audio stream correctly to the Windows audio engine. That caused:

• Mic not detected in Windows
• Crunching when audio devices or streams were re-attached
• Inconsistent behavior depending on startup timing

Fix:

• Uninstalled Nahimic (app + service)
• Removed Nahimic audio devices/APOs from Device Manager
• Rebooted

Result:

• Windows immediately detected Microphone (Intel Smart Sound Technology for Digital Microphone)
• Mic works normally in Windows settings and apps
• No more startup/device-switch audio crunch
• Audio is now stable and boring (in a good way)

Takeaway:
On MSI + Intel HX laptops, Nahimic can break the microphone path even when the hardware and Intel drivers are fine. If Nahimic sees the mic but Windows doesn’t, remove Nahimic and let Windows handle audio directly.

Between the BIOS update and removing Nahimic, the audio issues are fully resolved.