No sound and error: "A device ID has been used that is out of range"

[Mouseless]

Hi,

I have Win7 64bit host and Realtek HD Audio.

I have this error whenever I boot up a virtual machine whatever the guest OS is:

"The default sound device cannot be opened: A device ID has been used that is out of range for your system. Virtual device sound will start disconnected."

I have read a lot of previous posts, but still can't understand why this error come up and found no solutions is good for me.

I tried Win98, Me, XP, Win7, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, and only Win7 machine is OK.

Then I noticed that, if in vmx file,

sound.virtualDev = "hdaudio"

then for any virtual machines, no such error appear.

but if

sound.virtualDev = "es1371"

or

sound.virtualDev = "sb16"

any virtual machines will have that error on boot-up.

I tried uninstalling VMWare Workstation and my sound drive, but that changed nothing.

I really appreciate any advice you provide.

[WoodyZ]

Don't know whether or not this will be of any help however... Have a look at: http://www.nebularnerd.com/2013/09/vmware-sound-issues-with-realtek-hd.html

[grace27]

Hi

Welcome to the communities.

Its seems es1371 or sb16 couldn't recognized by driver .

[Mouseless]

Thanks WoodyZ, I tried this, but it makes no difference.

[Mouseless]

Thanks grace27.

They couldn't recognized by which driver, my sound driver on the real machine or the virtual machine?

Even if I don't give any sound device name, this problem remains.

[NetDude0]

I had the same problem under my Windows7 x64 host. I solved it by going to

Control Panel -> Sound

Select Speakers and click on Properties at the bottom of the window to get the Speakers Properties Window.

Under the Advanced tab, Check the "Allow applications to take exclusive control of this device" Box

Click Ok on Speakers Properties and Sound Windows to save and close and you should now be able to go to VMware and enable the sound device without getting an error.

Hope this helps.

[sylzg]

You can look at this VMware Knowledge Base