HP Failed to create Conexant Audio Factory, the SmartAudio will now exit

On many HP machines the user is plagued by an error dialogue that pops up repeatedly, and clicking OK simply delays its reappearance. The content of the dialogue is “Failed to create Conexant Audio Factory, The Smart Audio will now exit”.

HP suggest various things, including removing and reinstalling the device driver, but none seem to work consistently. Even the fix below – whilst giving brief respite – appears to need to be applied again at some point in the future (presumably when MS push through some other update).

To resolve the appearance of the error dialogue simply find the installation executable on your PC and run. The default location for the file is:
C:\Program Files\CONEXANT\SA3\HP-NB-AIO\Setup64.exe