1) Product name: HP ENVY 15t-k000 CTO Notebook PC (ENERGY STAR)
Problem: None of the methods for removing the Beats Audio drivers that come stock with ENVY laptops work, now that I installed Windows 10 a few months ago. Beats Audio makes the laptop completely useless for just about anything related to audio. There should be a way to remove the driver permanently and replace it with the stock Realtek ones that already exist.
2) Product number: G7Z03AV
Operating system: Windows 10 Home
Error messages: No relevant error messages, just a completely useless audio driver
Recent hardware or software changes made to the system: Well I just tried (again again) to install the Realtek audio driver from the HP website specifically for my laptop's product name/number. It didn't have any noticeable effect, however.
Troubleshooting performed: Many methods over many weeks. Most of the methods for removing Beats Audio listed online simply don't work for this computer. For example this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MExhl8Gefpc video's method doesn't work because the very first step is to locate the IDT drivers in device manager. However, my device manager rather looks like this: 
None of the drivers or software relevant to Beats Audio show up anywhere on my computer, including the device manager, programs & features, etc., effectively making the methods listed online useless. I've tried, as I said, to install the relevant Realtek drivers from the HP website to no avail.
My current workaround is to go into device manager, right click on "Realtek High Definition Audio," click "Uninstall," and then check the box labelled "Delete the driver software for this device" and restart the machine. This is more than a little bit annoying since I can't do it at just any time (since it disables the audio entirely and makes the machine useless until it is restarted), since it has to be power cycled at least twice when I don't anticipate it (Windows forced update, power loss, etc.), and because it doesn't work properly every time, sometimes taking up to a half an hour just to get the audio to work on my computer when I want to use it.
This workaround isn't viable, and should not be necessary. Before I installed Windows 10, I followed a method I found here on these forums and Beats Audio was neatly disabled. I'm not sure why I can't do this on Windows 10.
Another notable method I tried to troubleshoot was as follows: 1) Uninstall my audio drivers completely (using the above workaround method). 2) Install a Windows utility to create "hidden updates," which supposedly would not automatically install so long as they were hidden. I selected the only update that was relevant in any way to "Beats Audio" (or audio generally) and hid it. However, since hiding the update, Beats Audio has installed itself many times, so that's bunk.
Connection method: Not really relevant, but I use standard Wi-Fi for connecting to the internet.