I had a little time to spare and I decided to take another stab at this. I
noticed that the verbose lspci command was issued without superuser privileges,
so I asked my friend to send it again and I am attaching it. I compared all the
logs to those of other systems, though I don't have anything else with the
ALC262, but I can't say that anything stands out.

It's not really my problem (it's my friend's) but it is an annoying puzzle.
Could it be failing hardware? Could it be windows? I would really appreciate
the input from someone knowledgeable.