0

I've got a Windows XP Virtual Machine (VMWare system) and a thin client. Now the product looks like it will support sound, I think this is a "Windows" issue though (because of how Windows behaves).

Basically, everything looks fine for sound but when I go to the "Sounds and Audio Devices Properties" dialog, it shows me that its trying to pump sound through "Microsoft RDP Audio Driver" but its muted and won't let me unmute it (every time I try, and hit Apply, it will immediately re-mute itself).

Whenever I attempt to play some music through Windows Media Player, the error comes up "WMP cannot play the file because there is a problem with your sound device. There might not be a sound device installed on your computer, it might be in use by another program, or it might not be functioning properly"

This same problem also exists when I connect via plain vanilla RDP from another Windows client.

Any ideas on how to remedy this?

tearman
  • 425
  • 1
  • 6
  • 20

2 Answers2

0

Does the Server you are hosting the VM's on have a physical sound card? If not you're not going to be able to pass sound.

Windows needs a sound device installed to pass sound (makes sense right?), however VMWare cannot emulate a sound card, without having a physical sound card in the machine. Unfortunately you are lucky to even get a system speaker on new high end server. If it's not a blade server, you might be able to toss a PCI sound card in the box and get one that way.

Zypher
  • 36,995
  • 5
  • 52
  • 95
  • Unfortunately, no, no sound card. I'm not sure if we can slot one in either. Do you know if 1 sound card will work for multiple VMs? – tearman Jan 06 '10 at 17:21
  • Yep it's not 1 to 1 ... VMWare just needs something to send TO Virtualize – Zypher Jan 06 '10 at 18:11
0

Turns out the fix is detailed on VMWare's support site (search for "sound" under the "ESX 3.0" product, KB Article # 1004839). You may need to change the domain policy as well because the default domain policy tended to inhibit this as well.

tearman
  • 425
  • 1
  • 6
  • 20