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So I have a Windows 10 device that recently lost the ability to display the Volume OSD thing when pressing the volume keys, and (contrary to what others seem to want) I want it back.

Volume OSD overlay

This is apparently also affecting the Currently Playing music thing that's supposed to show up next to the volume slider.

Any ideas?

Some other posts mention Accessibility options and adjusting the Popup delay, but that didn't seem to work.

Edit for clarification:

This is a Vensmile box (similar to this), running Windows 10 home. Just about the only thing I've done so far is plug in a keyboard and display (at which point it seemed working fine), and after windows did some updates, now it's gone.

What's even more eerie now that I've tried it is that the media buttons (skip back, play/pause, skip forward) don't work either, but the Windows-specific buttons on the keyboard (open browser, open music, open files, sleep, search, share, connect display, toggle display mode, settings, show desktop) work fine. :/ It almost sounds like an entire subsystem is borked...

Tsaukpaetra
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  • are you using a laptop? if yes, please provide its model. Also, did you do anything that may caused this issue? – iSR5 May 12 '16 at 06:11
  • IPC002 (or equivalent), it's basically a tablet with no screen/keyboard/mouse. – Tsaukpaetra May 12 '16 at 06:31
  • try to remove and download your keyboard drivers for Windows 10 – iSR5 May 12 '16 at 06:53
  • @iSR5 No effect, the keyboard seems fine, but the OS isn't displaying the UI. – Tsaukpaetra May 13 '16 at 05:30
  • go to Services and then search for Human Interface Device Access, right-click on it and choose restart. see if this will fix it. – iSR5 May 13 '16 at 20:38
  • @iSR5 Nope, issue persists also after a full reboot (not just shutdown and turn on, which apparently is just hibernate now). I'm probably going to see if `sfc.exe /scannow` will find anything – Tsaukpaetra May 13 '16 at 20:54
  • I was just thinking, why you don't go to Control Panel > Default Programs > Set Program Access and Computer Defaults, then expand Custom, and set the Choose the media player to Windows Media Player (or whatever player you use) and make sure that (Enable access to this program) is checked. Then run your player and check the media keys – iSR5 May 13 '16 at 21:08
  • Unfortunately, it wasn't the keyboard, I'm posting what ended up happening. – Tsaukpaetra May 14 '16 at 02:35

4 Answers4

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So the answer was a whole lot further off base than I would ever have thought.

So I was using a somewhat trusty program called SRS Audio Sandbox (more recently SRS HD Lab or something) to adjust for the fact that my speakers kinda suck. Well, it doesn't work on audio cards that aren't connected to PCI (for some reason), so I uninstalled it.

Unfortunately, the installer did not remove the "Audio Filter" pseudo sound card that's used to capture your sound for processing (I guess it was in an error state?), so Device Manager listed it as working fine, but in the Sound control panel it was basically non-functional.

Apparently, having a sound card that refuses to fully initialize (or gets stuck, whatever) doesn't completely stop Windows from playing sounds, or using your functioning sound hardware, but it will screw up the UI for some reason.

Once I removed the broken sound card using Device Manager, all is well in the world, media keys work and the sound slider pops up when appropriate.

Who'da thunk it?

Tsaukpaetra
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    Whoa! This is the exact issue that I was having. I've scoured what felt like the whole internet to find this solution. Thanks a bunch for posting it, didn't even occur to me that the culprit could be there. For the record I had to disable "DroidCam Virtual Audio" and afterwards it works. – Wizek Mar 21 '17 at 19:11
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    Thanks, this helped me. I had an external audio interface plugged into USB (a Steinberg UR22). For some reason, pulling out the cable and plugging it back appears to have restored OSD functionality. I'm hoping it doesn't disappear again... – Luigi Plinge Apr 04 '17 at 11:11
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I had a similar problem, but it wasn't due to that third party software. I believe the only change I made was to update nVidia drivers, and for some reason, nVidia also puts a sound card in the device manager. Now, this card was there before, and the only thing I did, was to disable all sound devices in the device manager, and test the volume keys. It worked when I disabled the realtek card, then I enabled all again, and it worked fine. I still don't know what was the issue, cause it was working fine, but this worked for me.

(Win 10 x64 creators update)

Mike Petterson
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I've had the same problem, I disabled all of my playback devices and it got fixed by it self. Windows Sound

Rayan Refoua
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So apparently a large number of users are currently experiencing this problem due to using a program called Explorer Patcher which restores the Windows 11 taskbar to the Windows 10 style. Here's the github issue for it https://github.com/valinet/ExplorerPatcher/issues/1692

Sean Bannister
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