A short guide on permanently eliminating Dell's Realtek & WavesMaxx audio and enjoying generic Realtek Drivers

I finally won the war against Dell's horrendous Maxxaudio realtek drivers from hell. It was a two part battle, one with Dell's Realtek and the other with Intel's Smart Sound Technology driver, which Microsoft has decided to force onto us through WIndows Updates. Below worked for me (using a Latitude 5440), so hopefully it will work for you as well.

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  1. Copy this into a text file and save as .reg. Merge into your registry by double clicking saved .reg file to prevent forced Microsoft driver installs. If you wish to undo this for some reason, replace everything after = with -

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PolicyManager\current\device\Update]

"ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\PolicyManager\default\Update]

"ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsUpdate\UX\Settings]

"ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate]

"ExcludeWUDriversInQualityUpdate"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Device Metadata]

"PreventDeviceMetadataFromNetwork"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\DriverSearching]

"SearchOrderConfig"=dword:00000000

"DontSearchWindowsUpdate"=dword:00000001

  1. Run Driver Store Explorer (RAPR from Github) and delete all instances of Realtek, Dell Wave, and Intel Smart Sound Technology Drivers using Force Removal

  2. Assuming step 1 is done properly, once all drivers above are gone, the generic Microsoft Headphone Audio driver will come back to life as it will not be overwritten by Microsoft, which is key to overlaying your own generic Realtek driver.

  3. Install generic Realtek driver (for your chipset) and enjoy clean audio!

a. you can find your chipset version by going into Device Manager -> Realtek Audio -> Details -> Device Instance Path -> DEV_XXXX

b. Search ALCXXXX on google to find the generic Realtek drivers you want to use

  1. Do not undo the update registry changes which are blocking those forced drivers, or you will have to do this all over again. Enjoy!