sound troubles with Win7 64-bit host, Linux guest

[yodle]

So, I'm getting this message when I boot a Xubuntu 12.04 guest, or when I try to connect the sound device manually after booting, inside the latest version of VMWare workstation (running on Windows 7 64 bit):

The default sound device cannot be opened:

A device ID has been used that is out of range for your system. Sound will be disconnected.

Of course I have no idea what that message means. I certainly didn't mean to use a device ID out of range for my system.

So there's no sound in my VM. This isn't the end of the world, but it's frustrating because:

A) VMWare doesn't have a public bug database so I have no idea if they are treating this as a bug and working to fix it.

B) I can't report it to support since I'm only evaluating Workstation. (although I'm a registered user of some other stuff)

C) This problem has, based on my forum searches, been around in various forms for a very, very long time.

I don't remember seeing this problem in VMWare Fusion on OS X. Linux guests always work fine there. I'm evaluating Workstation and it's weird the way Fusion (which I'm using now) seems so much better and so much less expensive.

Does anyone know if vmware is working on this? Since I'm evaluating VMWare Workstation for purchase I'm not really interested in workarounds, I'm only interested in knowing that they're working to fix it for good.

Thanks for any insights.

[yodle]

One interesting tidbit regarding this problem which nobody seems to care about is that, when I turn on the sound in one of my Ubuntu VMs with Removable Devices... Sound Card... Connect, there is a burst of sound before the error message pops up and things go silent. I hadn't noticed that before.

Does anyone who works for VMWare in a technical capacity actually read these forums?

[newbie93]

I ran into this problem a couple of months ago. The problem didn't exist in Ubuntu 10.04.1. But when I went to 10.04.4 I ran into the same problem. Not a perfect solution, but works ok in my setup.

Try these:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/291874

http://www.debuntu.org/how-disable-pulseaudio-and-sound-gdm

[yodle]

Thanks, I will take a look!

I wish I could get someone from VMWare to comment on whether they're working to fix this. My evaluation of Workstation has been so odd. It's rough around the edges in some ways that Fusion simply isn't, but it also costs a lot more, in spite of the fact that VMWare must sell a lot more of it.

[MaxMartin]

You may be having the same issue I had with RealTek hardware and any linux guest machine I tried.  My solution was to make sure "Disable front panel jack detection" was selected within the Realtek HD Audio Manager.

[kriscov]

I have VIA drivers - doing as described above and disabling the front jack autodetect sorted this problem for me.  Thanks!

[play3r]

I was getting the same error message when running Fedora 18 in VMware Player 5.0.1 and I fixed it with a couple of configureation changes in Fedora.

In recent distributions of linux sound has been handled by PulseAudio.  In the past, I have had much better luck with Alsa.  However, I had found a fix that worked for pulseaudio in "real" installations and decided to try it in "virtual."

1) (in the guest host) modify /etc/asound.conf to contain only these lines:

   pcm.pulse { type pulse }
   ctl.pulse { type pulse }
   pcm.!default { type pulse }
   ctl.!default { type pulse }

[ I may have rebooted the guest host and or the virtual machine at this point ]

2) reconnect the "virtual" sound card

   right click on the speaker icon to the right of the VMware toolbar

3) from within (the guest host) linux (in my case Fedora) select the appropriate sound configuration hardware profile:

   in my case since, I just had stero speakers, I chose "Analog Stero Output"

Hope this helps you and others.