How do I completely disable audio on my VM's?

[meimeiriver]

How do I completely disable audio on my VM's? I removed the sound cards from the VM's itself, but ESXi (rather passive-aggressively, I must say) decides to add audio anyway once the VM is running. Beeps and such are always a bit laggy (and no, I have a 1G local connection to the VM's). I'd rather just disable audio on them altogether.

[peetz]

What Guest OS are you using, Windows or Linux?

How do you connect to the VM? To the console using the vSphere Client, or via remote connection to the Guest OS (e.g. RDP into Windows)?

Maybe you are referring to the legacy PC speaker interface (also called the "beep" device) which is not really related to any Soundcard device? There is a KB article on how to disable it:

https://kb.vmware.com/kb/1664

[meimeiriver]

I'm using a Remote Desktop connection to a Windows 10 guest OS. The audio is disabled, briefly, upon logon, and then automagically reappears again.

[peetz · Accepted solution]

For Remote Desktop Connections Windows uses a builtin "Remote Audio" device.

You can disable that in the Remote Desktop Connection App (mstsc.exe) on the client computer. See "Local Resources / Remote Audio"

[MKguy]

You can disable the sound device in the Windows device manager.

You can also do a custom VMware Tools installation excluding audio drivers, I usually do this:

https://alpacapowered.wordpress.com/2015/07/02/renamed-vmware-tools-components-and-automatic-install...

[peetz]

You can, but this does not help at all when you are connecting via RDP to a Windows VM, because you will then use the Windows builtin "Remote Audio" device.

[meimeiriver]

LOL. I'm such an idiot. Of course, that was Windows, not Vmware's fault. My bad.