W10 1511 Realtek prompts

[GreTech12]

A bit of an odd situation so I didn't know where to put this post...

 

My district uses Dell hardware and any time headphones are plugged in a Realtek audio manager pops up to determine what was plugged in. This has become a real thorn in our side due to secure testing (which ends up closing explorer.exe and locking the computer down). Symptoms include the microphone stops working or the headset stops responding.

 

Has anyone dealt with this? I've found a registry entry to disable such prompts but not all computers in the district use this Realtek software and some are Windows 7 and some are Windows 10. Additionally, disabling the prompt doesn't necessarily ensure that Windows will see the microphone properly. On laptops I have a somewhat official fix to just use the Microsoft High Definition audio generic driver and this always picks up the microphone but on desktops it doesn't.

 

Additional knowledge:

 

Desktop models in question - Optiplex 3020 and 3040 (3020s run Windows 7, 3040s run Windows 10)

Laptops in question (these are solved due to the generic Microsoft audio driver) - Latitude 3340 (Win7) Latitude 3350 (Win10)

 

If you need some details on the Realtek software I can see what I can dig up.

 

Thanks in advance