After 3 days of struggling, my audio came back on soon after I posted my message. I went back once again to delete the faulty drivers with the exclamation point, and it wasn't there. I scanned for hardware changes, and it didn't come back. And the red "x" on the speaker was gone. I still didn't have sound, but I rebooted. Still no sound, but with a a click on troubleshooting, and a long wait, the sound came back!
So maybe just keep trying to delete the faulty driver, and the higher level as indicated in HP's advice, If it doesn't work the first time, maybe for some reason it will if you try it one or more time. I really don't know what I did that did it, but somehow the issue resolved itself.