Bugged audio after sleep with the Windows 11 July 2026 update

I thought Microsoft had got a handle on buggy Windows updates. Alas, since installing the KB5095093 preview update for Windows 11 25H2, the audio on my desktop PC is occasionally broken after resuming from sleep. Broken here means that applications get stuck when trying to play audio. Videos on the web, for example, just hang in a weird way. The problem has persisted with the non-preview KB5101650 July 2026 update recently released, and also with the KB5121767 out-of-band update that followed it. Some reports of this problem have also cropped up on the Microsoft forums in the last week: Windows Update KB5100998 Audio Issues WIN11 - NO SOUND There’s also a two-month-old report of this problem on the Feedback Hub. (The earlier date might be explained by the problem first cropping up in an insider preview version.) As you can imagine, the problem is very annoying. And so, when the problem has happened, I’ve been trying various things to fix things with the least amount of faff. After a…