Lenovo Yoga 13 fixes #7 – Windows 8.1 update causes a few issues
The Windows 8.1 update brings a lot of nice improvements, however it also creates two problems (well, let’s just say I only encountered two problems), both easily remedied. These issues are caused by something the Windows 8.1 installation does in refreshing the state of the device drivers.
1) Sound doesn’t work. Additionally, this causes videos / movies to fail to play with an obscure error. I want to start out by mentioning the first thing I tried to fix this, which seems to work but is in fact incomplete: If you go to the control panel (win key + x -> control panel), then open the Sound applet, it will immediately pop up a message saying that sound enhancements have been detected that are causing sound problems, and it asks if you want to disable these enhancements. It is fine to click yes on this, but it only partially solves the problem. Sound will indeed work after doing this, but the Dolby Home Theater program no longer works. I suspect these are the sound enhancements that were referred to in the error message.
The correct fix is to download the Conexant audio driver from Lenovo and run the installation. This simply reinstalls the same sound driver that was already there, but reinstalling it fixes it. Get the driver here: http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloads/detail.page?DocID=DS032590
2) The touch screen device was also reinitialized during the upgrade, so you will have to reapply the Fix #1 listed below in an earlier post in this blog. This is the fix for the touch screen going to sleep and missing the first swipe. You can find it here: https://cogitoabsurdum.wordpress.com/2013/05/30/how-to-fix-the-lenovo-yoga-13-touch-it-misses-swipes-because-it-sleeps/
EDIT: A 3rd problem on my machine resulting from the 8.1 upgrade is documented in a newer post above – fixes #9.
Crudités of Absurdités 
Great thanks – sorted my video playback issue – audio drivers causing the problem. Nice one!
Oh yeah, thanks for the callout on that, I had the same problem. I added a note about videos not playing in the write-up above.
reinstalling the conextant driver did not fix the issue for me. If I click on Dolby Home Theater from the Start Menu, it tells me that it is “unable to start the Dolby audio driver”. Any suggestions? Thanks.
Just to sanity check, you are on a Yoga 13? Simply reinstalling the Conexant driver usually does the trick. Try doing it this way: go to the device manager and uninstall the Conexant driver – do not check the box that asks if you want to remove the files from disk. Then restart, and the system will automatically reinstall the existing Conexant drivers that were left on disk. Let me know if that doesn’t work.
Hello
Perhaps you can help me. I have 11S and when i turn it into tablet mode either with music or video playing, it starts breaking up and freezing the sound and video. I already fixed the conexant driver issue and dolby but still having the problem. Any suggestions what else to update?
I don’t personally have an 11s, so I may not have a solution. But based on some similar problems that people have reported with the Yoga 13, the following ideas might help:
0) In case you need the link, here is the Lenovo driver page for the 11s:
http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/downloads/detail.page?DocID=DS035817
1) This may be due to the Intel Dynamic Platform Thermal Framework driver (DPTF). Many people with the Yoga 13 had to reinstall this driver, and it can affect the CPU speed. Try reinstalling the driver – make sure you grab the one for your version of Windows, presumable 8.1.
2) There was a weird network (wifi) driver that Lenovo released on the driver page for the Yoga 13 that would cause the mouse cursor to flicker every 2 seconds and affected performance. With the Windows 8.1 upgrade there was a newer version on Windows Update that seems to work better for everyone. Go to the device manager and find your wifi driver, right click on it and choose the option to search for a newer driver. This will make sure you have the latest driver, as offered by Windows update, anyway.
3) Disable the YMC service in the services manager. There is a post on my blog about how to do this. You can always re-enable the service if you find that it did something useful, but on my machine it was not necessary for anything.
Cheers, and good luck!