Audio for headless Windows 7 VM

[BartZorn]

Hello,

I have a Windows 7 VM for which sound works fine. However, when I start this VM headless, sound seems to be disabled. Is there a way to enable sound?

Tech info: Host is Windows 2008 R2, VirtualBox 4.3.12. Guest is Windows 7 x64 Professional. Both host and guest have all updates installed.

Any ideas?

TIA,

Bart Zorn

[BartZorn]

Further experimenting has shown that it depends on how I start the headless machine.

When I start the machine from the GUI, with the Shift key pressed, Audio works. When I start the machine with a script using vboxmanage, it also works.
But when I start that same script using the Task Scheduler, the machine starts up, but Audio does not work.

So I have to assume that this is not a VirtualBox problem, but a Windows Task Scheduler problem. However, somebody hopefully has some suggestions?

TIA,

Bart

[noteirak]

Do you run your schedule task under a regular user and have you enabled the "interact with desktop"?

[BartZorn]

Sorry I did not reply earlier.

I run the task as an ordinary user, which is a member of the Administrators group.

I could not find where to specify if the task is allowed to interact with the desktop.

Regards,

Bart

[noteirak]

I'm confusing with Services for the desktop interaction. If you can't allow that, I am not sure you can do what you want. Maybe others will have clues about this.

[BartZorn]

Thanks for your reply.

Although I don't understand why, I have a feeling that there is a link between the desktop and the availability of sound, at least in Windows 2008 R2.

I will explore further and I hope someone else is also interested!

Bart

[noteirak]

There is definitely a link. that's why I mention the "interact with desktop" part.