Left channel keeps cutting out.

Hi, I got a second hand gaming laptop recently. An Asus Republic of Gamers Zephyrus.

Everything seemed fine for a while...

But now when I restart windows I have to manually start up the wifi service or I have no internet connection and the left channel keeps cutting out when using the laptop speakers.

When I use my USB sound card, headphones or external speakers it's not an issue. The thing is, is that if I change the audio settings, say from 16bit to 24 bit or 4100khz to 4800khz it works again for a short while before cutting out again which makes me think it's not a physical issue with the speaker itself.

There seems to be only one realtek audio driver from the Asus website that I can install and reinstalling doesn't seem to have helped... Please help, what can I do? Is there an audio service that isn't enabled like the Wifi issue? Are they related? Can it be fixed?