Vmware hassle, sound works at first but then stops if I use it in host OS

[vmos3]

hello, I'm using vmware-server in kubuntu 9, mostly with winxp as the guest OS. If I fire up the VM, sound works fine. If I then go back to kubuntu and play a tune or something, sound works fine there, but if I then go back to the guest OS sound no longer works. No error message or anything, as far as windows is concerned it still has a sound device and keeps playing away but now there is a red X beside the audio device in vmware system status.

I can't get the sound back without rebooting my whole pc. I've tried restarting vmware-server a few different ways but they all end up buggering everything up and I have to reinstall the whole thing.

I've tried editing this section but all I've managed to do is stop the sound entirely


sound.present = "TRUE"
#sound.virtualDev = "es1371"
sound.allowGuestConnectionControl = "FALSE"
sound.fileName = "-1"
sound.autodetect = "TRUE"

sound.pciSlotNumber = "36"

any suggestions?

[dibl]

Re: Vmware hassle, sound works at first but then stops if I use it in host OS

VMWare Player works about the same. It's not a big deal to me so I haven't done any experiments to see if there are any fixes.

So, I fired up my Win XP VM this morning, to play with sound. Here's what I found:

1. With no sound playing on Linux, the VM opened and I heard the Win XP "greeting" sound.

2. In Linux, I opened alsaplayer and played a tune. I stopped it after confirming I had audio.

3. Back to Win XP, Media player acted like it was playing a song, but there was no audio. In the VM "Devices" menu it showed the sound card disconnected.

4. In Linux, I closed alsaplayer. In the Win XP VM, I clicked "Devices > Connect" on the sound card. Then Media player played again.

5. In Linux, I opened alsaplayer and played a song -- no problem. I clicked "Stop" but left alsaplayer open.

6. In Win XP, the sound card appeared to be still connected, but as soon as I tried to play a song, it threw the "sound card is disconnected" error. I clicked "Devices > Connect" and got an error "Failed to open, device or resource is busy".

7. In Linux, I closed alsaplayer. Waited 10 seconds, clicked "Devices > Connect" in the VM, and it was good to go once again.

Conclusion: There's only one sound system on the host. It can be used by the host, in which case the guest can't use it. It can be used by the guest, and the host can't use it at that time. User intervention with the VMWare "Devices" connection menu is sometimes necessary to restore service to the guest OS.

My VMWare Player is ver. 2.5.2, 64-bit, default configuration.

[vmos3]

Re: Vmware hassle, sound works at first but then stops if I use it in host OS

AH HA! That's where I was going wrong. Although I was stopping amarok playing, I was leaving it open. If I close it entirely (or whatever else was using sound) then I can get the sound back on my VM without rebooting everything.
This is good, it's less than ideal but I can work around it. I have a couple of sound cards doing nothing, I might throw one of those in and see if I can tell vmware just to use it.

Thanks officer dibl

[robfish]

Re: Vmware hassle, sound works at first but then stops if I use it in host OS

This has been a frustration for me too, especially as the old versions of VMWare worked fine.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Vmware hassle, sound works at first but then stops if I use it in host OS

One sound aggravation that VM gave me was that when I shut down the XP guest OS it set my Linux speak volume to 0 and nulled the speaker. I always had to turn the speaker back on and run up the volume after I quit the guest OS.