Saturday, February 16, 2008

Windows Server 2008 Audio Driver for VMWare

A short one: those of you who may have installed Windows Server 2008 (beginning with RC0 through the RTM) have discovered that no audio driver is available, for the VM's simulated device.

This was doubly annoying, since the OS resorts to using the onboard speaker (loud beeps, no way to control the volume).

Aaron Tiensivu found the right driver, hidden somewhere in the Microsoft Update site, but no longer offered as an automatic download. And it works! (Apparently it also solves Vista issues, although I never ran into those).

Download the driver here and if it's ever taken down, I've saved a copy here.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great effort! Thank you!

Anonymous said...

Thanks

Anonymous said...

OMG, thank you so much for saving that file. I am running VMFusion and needed sound to test a terminal server environment on Svr 2008. I have been looking for hours trying to find something that would work.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!

Eric said...

I got a message box with no text in it. I have win server 2008 on an old Compaq Presario R3000.

Traveling Tech Guy said...

@Eric, did you manage to load and install the driver?

BTW, I think current versions of VMWare Player have sound support for 2008.

Jason Clark said...

I'm not Eric, but I'm seeing the same issue. I'm on VM 4.0 Update 1 and Server 2008 R2 SP1.

Traveling Tech Guy said...

@riceboyler try running the installer as an administrator (right-click EXE file and choose "run as administrator"). Also, I thought VMWare solved that issue already, are you sure your sound is enabled in Win2008?

Anonymous said...

Rob Lintz here..

I solved this same problem (I tried your driver and also ended up with a blank box with a blue ! mark).
Doing a little more research I found the solution that worked for me.

Start -> Administration Tools -> Services

Find "Windows Audio"
Right Click windows Audio and click start.
I changted mine to Start Automaticaly.

Good luck to everyone on this matter.