I have been messing around with Windows 7 in a virtual machine for quite some time and I recently installed a fresh copy but ran into one problem. For some reason, my Windows 7 VM was not outputting sound. The other worked fine, so it was really weird. If you are not getting sound from the Windows virtual machine in VMWare Fusion, there are several troubleshooting steps you can take.
In the end, the sound on my new Windows 7 virtual machine worked, but it took a little fiddling before I could figure out what the problem was. In this article, I will show you several possible solutions, and I hope one of them works for you. If not, leave a comment and I’ll get back to you with help.
First method – check VM settings
The first thing you need to do is make sure that sound is actually turned on in the virtual machine. You can do this by going to “Virtual Machine” and clicking “Settings”.
Click on Sound Card in the list of items under Removable Devices:
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Make sure the switch is on.
Note that if you don’t even have a Sound Card item in the Removable Devices section, you need to click Add Device in the Settings dialog box and then select Sound Card. Then it will appear and you can turn it on. If this was already included for you, then your problem is different, keep reading.
Method 2 – Edit VMX file
Your VMX file also has some sound related configuration options that might be causing the problem. You can open the VMX file for your virtual machine by going to the virtual machine library and then holding down the Option key and right-clicking the virtual machine. You will see an option to open the config file in an editor.
Now you need to find the following parameters and make sure they exist in the file:
sound.present = “TRUE” sound.filename = “-1” sound.autodetect = “TRUE”
If these parameters are not in the file, you need to add them. In addition, the following options must be removed, if they exist:
sound.virtualdev = “sb16” sound.virtualdev = “es1371” sound.virtualdev = “hdaudio”
Go ahead and restart the virtual machine once you’ve checked all these parameters and hopefully your sound is working now! Otherwise, you only have one option! Keep reading.
Method 3 – Update the audio driver in the VM
The last thing you can try is updating the audio driver from the Windows virtual machine. To do this, you can right-click My Computer and select Manage. Then click Device Manager in the left pane. Scroll down to Sound, Video and Game Controllers and right-click Creative AudioPCI (ES1371, ES1373) (WDM) if you are using Windows XP, or right-click High Definition Audio Device.
Now go ahead and click on Update Driver Software and then click Search automatically for updated driver software. Restart the virtual machine after updating the driver.
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