Solved Win11 VM - No Sound - NOT an office/network environment - home apartment

Bree · Oct 10, 2023

pparks1 said:
With dynamic RAM enabled, most VM's will give back RAM to the host when it's not needed...so you can theoretically even run more than math would indicate. Most VM's aren't working hard simultaneously, so this works.

Yeah, I once tested that to the limit, just to see when it would fall over.... :wink:

I got up to 10 VM's in 32GB RAM.

cereberus · Oct 10, 2023

If using Hyper-V, Windows 10 Home can only be installed in basic mode as it does not support a RDP server.

There is a work around to install

WonderWoman said:
BINGO!!!! Finally got the sound working on the VM!!! A friend of mine found a video that detailed the exact steps about the Windows Hello being the interfering problem and followed the steps and got it working. I need to read things better because whereas I was following the steps to remove the Windows Hello, I was not truly paying attention to the fact that it was NOT looking for me to enter the PIN I created in order to allow for the removal it was looking for the full blown PW for my Microsoft account. When I entered that PW it allowed me to remove the Windows Hello credentials. I now have the sound working on the VM.

Two follow up questions:

1) How do I get that initial VM connector box to come up? It comes up for me ONLY the first time I connect to the VM for it's maiden launch and then after that when I start the machine and click on "connect" in the Hypervisor Console it goes straight into the machine window and doesn't give me this box:

View attachment 73577

2) Is it possible to duplicate and simply rename VMs so that you don't have to go through repeated VM creation steps including installing the OS? If yes, how do I do that please?

Creating a new vm only takes a minute or so. You can copy any vhdx and attach to new vm. You do not need to reinstall OS each time.

WonderWoman · Oct 10, 2023

jimbo45 said:
The problem though with running concurrent identical Windows builds as VM's is that you won't be able to pass thru any hardware so you will have to have 100% "paravirtualisation" which isn't the most efficient way of running VM's.

When you said "won't be able to pass thru any hardware" does that mean if I am running multiople concurrent VMs does that mean I would not be capable of connecting to my NAS or do sound on ANY of the VMs at all or will I be able to access the NAS and do sound on the particular VM I would be utilizing at the given moment while the others are running but not being used?

Oh, and as a footnote, I have 32GB RAM on my Katana GF66 where these VMs would be based off of and I always utilize virtualization for both RAM and HD.

jimbo45 · Oct 11, 2023

WonderWoman said:
When you said "won't be able to pass thru any hardware" does that mean if I am running multiople concurrent VMs does that mean I would not be capable of connecting to my NAS or do sound on ANY of the VMs at all or will I be able to access the NAS and do sound on the particular VM I would be utilizing at the given moment while the others are running but not being used?

Oh, and as a footnote, I have 32GB RAM on my Katana GF66 where these VMs would be based off of and I always utilize virtualization for both RAM and HD.

No - it only means if you pass a specific piece of hardware to a VM then that piece of hardware can only be used by that VM and not even the HOST. My NAS has for example 2 LAN cards in it so I pass thru one of them to a VM -- better network throughput via a real adapter than a virtual one.

So in your case if your HOST has a sound card and you attach it to the VM then only that VM can use the sound card - and not even your host. So in your case do you logon on to the VM's as applications on the Host or do you logon via another computer remotely. If a remote computer then sound shouldn't be a problem - enable sound etc on the remote computer via the remote desktop login options. If logging in as an application on the Host then you have to ensure sound is working on the Host or it's no go.

There's no inherent reason why a Windows VM whether on HYPER-V, VBOX, WMWARE WKS, KVM/QEMU etc doesn't have any sound. I even get sound on a Windows 2022 LTSC server VM (I've fixed it a bit to run like a desktop OS so it can run multi-media such as VLC, KODI etc.)

I like this server -- it has the best features from Win 10 and Win 11 in it runs for 180 days free trial and can be extended almost indefinitely via slmgr rearm has no bloat and runs very fast.

@Bree
On a machine with enough RAM the problem isn't bringing up VM's => as when they are in a quiescent state they aren't gobbling up much RAM - but once you start doing things in them concurrently you need a lot of CPU power and a really good disk i/o subsystem -- as running a load of heavy I/O through the Mobos' Disk I/O subsystem and hardware bus even if it's a decent set of Nvme's will become saturated - plus sooner or later a VM will want user input and be quiesced until its satisfied. Swapping in and out a whole slew load of vseveral vm's working area will also load the paging system up to the limit.

Try running 8 or 9 say with 3 or 4 working on essentially background jobs -- for example copying large files, downloading a load of "junk" from the internet, with the other doing things like running photoshop on one, video editing on another, ripping a CD on another one etc. You'll soon find even on a high end domestic machine the thing will start going bonkers.

That's why server farms have huge blade servers with masses amount of "dedicated hardware" , SAS I/O subsystems and provide a single virtual desktop infrastructure to a user or probably these days make far more use of containers which can provide a similar service for the end user rather than full blown virtualisation.

I'd probably wager that for normal use concurrent running 2 or 3 Windows VM's is probably the best one can do to run concurrently on the sort of hardware even a high end home user would have,

Incidently I'm experimenting with containers -- seems a great idea - but I know nothing about them so am starting slowly. I do though get apalled at the quality of some youtube demos these days -- having taught evening classes in the past I cringe at how these things are presented. You have to speak very slowly - as if the students all have learning disablities, go over everything in small stages, often repeating stuff, giving students enough time to take notes if they so wish etc -- and PLEASE you tubers -- no more hideous background music especially of the overbassed thump thump variety while giving your demo,

cheers
jimbo