However, for this time, the driver wouldn't install and I was stuck with the HD Audio Device driver. I reinstalled the Asus Realtek Dolby Atmos drivers.

I proceeded to uninstall them, through DDU's audio driver uninstaller and upon logging into Windows 10, tried the test tone on the High Definition Audio Device driver that Windows comes with. It ran for one day, enough for me to even get a BIOS update but I noticed that the audio driver lacked a Stereo Mix so I decided to install the generic audio drivers from Realtek's own website: '0009-64bit_Win7_Win8_Win81_Win10_R282.exe.' After a gruelingly long download (since their servers are capped at 30 KB/s), I installed them and immediately after reboot, I was met with no audio, no test tone, nothing. I proceeded to install Windows 10 and get it running with all the Asus Windows 11 drivers and what not INCLUDING the audio driver. I installed the 2TB drive and it booted Windows 11 just fine so I had a boot media that would work in case Windows 10 didn't. I purchased the new ROG Strix Scar 18 (2023) and didn't want Windows 11 so I cloned the two 1TB boot drives into a 2TB drive and disabled the RAID config it comes with out of the box. This may be a peculiar case and I am thoroughly stumped.

Realtek rtl8821ae driver windows 7