virtualbox.org

First off:
Yes, I have searched, both the web and the forums. I've reinstalled the driver both from Windows Update and from Realtek. They both install, the "card" shows up in windows's Device Manager, but applications can't play audio.

Windows Media Player, which is my test app (as it gives an error message rather than just playing silently), says "Windows Media Player cannot play the file because there is a problem with your sound device. There may not be a sound device installed on your computer, it may be in use by another program, or may not be functioning corrrectly."

The settings in VBox itself are CoreAudio and AC97.

In the Windows Device Manager, I have the following entries under "Sound, video and game controllers":
Audio Codecs
Intel(r) 82801AA AC'97 Audio Controller
Legacy Audio Drivers
Legacy Video Capture Devices
Video Codecs

As I said, I've tried both Windows's and Realtek's driver for the AC'97 entry, but they both give the same error. Windows troubleshooting says everything is perfect.

FWIW, I installed this VM without audio months ago, and added the virtual sound card today.

Any ideas?
Could this be new to 3.2.0, seeing how the CoreAudio driver was rewritten, according to the changelog?
I upgraded to 3.2.0 yesterday or today, never having had sound in VBox before.

Host:
Macbook Pro Late 2006 (Core 2 Duo; 3GB RAM; Radeon X1600 128MB)
Snow Leopard 10.6.3
VirtualBox 3.2.0; audio settings CoreAudio/AC97 (tried SB16 to no avail, XP didn't even detect it)

Guest:
Windows XP SP3
1 CPU, 300MB RAM (not that I think that matters)

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Possibly useful lines from VBox.log:

00:00:01.769 Audio: Trying driver 'coreaudio'.
00:00:01.769 Audio: set_record_source ars=0 als=0 (not implemented)
00:00:01.933 CoreAudio: Using input device: Built-in Input (UID: AppleHDAEngineInput:1B,0,1,1:2)
00:00:02.039 CoreAudio: Using output device: Built-in Output (UID: AppleHDAEngineOutput:1B,0,1,2:0)
00:00:02.045 DevPcBios: ATA LUN#0 LCHS=652/255/63
00:00:02.045 DevPcBios: ATA LUN#1 LCHS=1024/255/63
...
00:00:27.176 Guest Additions information report: additionsVersion = 0x00010004 osType = 0x00033000
00:00:27.217 Guest reported fixed hypervisor window at 0xf7800000 (size = 0x800000, rc = VINF_SUCCESS)
00:00:28.589 Audio: set_record_source ars=0 als=0 (not implemented)
00:00:28.591 Audio: set_record_source ars=0 als=0 (not implemented)
00:00:28.757 PCNet#0: Init: ss32=1 GCRDRA=0x01a79420[64] GCTDRA=0x01a79020[64]

Hi!

I would like to add that since updating to v3.2.0 this afternoon, I notice that my WinXP Sp3 has clipped sound. After a click, snap, buzz, the sound seems to start-up. This didn't happen in v3.1.6 (last version I ran prior to update today).

I'm not sure if it's important, but my XP-SP3 installation (on MacOS 10.6.3 host) has an additional entry in Device Manager: "Media Control Devices"
Audio out is working OK for me.
Good Luck.

Weird stuff...
I created a new VM and installed Windows 2000 - sound worked out of the box. Unfortunately, it appears Steam has removed support for anything lower than XP as of last week (my kind of luck after spending half an hour installing Win2k). I created a new XP VM instead, and - sound works out of the box. Same settings everywhere AFAIK.
Sorry I can't be of more help to others with this problem.

(In other news, Half-Life was unplayable in VBox anyway - the framerate was choppy; to get a non-black image you had to load a game, switch to D3D using an invisible mouse pointer, then switch back to OpenGL; and after all that, the game randomly exits to the main menu, meaning you have to load again. SIgh. All this for nothing.)

First off, XP has the driver for AC'97 build-in. If you removed that, it means you modified a stock XP installation and we don't support those. Any modifications made to the installation of a base Windows system are at your own risk and we can't support that.

Sasquatch wrote:First off, XP has the driver for AC'97 build-in. If you removed that, it means you modified a stock XP installation and we don't support those. Any modifications made to the installation of a base Windows system are at your own risk and we can't support that.

As I said, XP did find the card (and thus the driver), and I did not use a modified install. It came straight from MSDN: AA.

But you were talking about an XP without audio, meaning you didn't install the driver or even had it in XP any more. At least, that's what I understood.

I am running Lucid 10.04 as the host and WindowsXP SP3 as the guest. Audio was working fine until a day or two ago when it suddenly stopped. I was running 3.2.4 at the time and have now upgraded to 3.2.6, but still no audio.

My host has audio with no problems...only in the guest is there an issue. Any ideas?

I tried reinstalling the RealTek driver before upgrading to 3.2.6...no luck.

Check the log file of the VM that has failing audio. It will tell you what's wrong, like it can't open the Host audio. If you're unsure what to look for, attach a log of a silent run here. Make sure that you haven't muted or set the volume to 0 on accident first.