VBox won't even begin booting if Host Audio Driver is set to Windows DirectSound

[Bubbie]

I have combed through many existing bug reports and forum posts and haven't found any that match the symptoms I observe exactly. The other similar tickets are for different hosts (both Mac OS and GNU/Linux), whereas I'm on Windows 7 x64.

Given that this seems to be an audio-related problem, I attempted to follow the steps described at https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/AudioDebug , but I don't see "Audio: Verbose logging enabled" in the log, despite what looks to be the correct output when I attempt to confirm the change:

C:\>echo %VBOX_RELEASE_LOG%
drv_host_audio.e.l.l2.l3.f+drv_audio.e.l.l2.l3.f+audio_mixer.e.l.l2.l3.f+dev_hda_codec.e.l.l2.l3.f+dev_hda.e.l.l2.l3.f+dev_ac97.e.l.l2.l3.f

(I will keep working on this and update the ticket if and when I'm able to capture verbose output.)

The guest boots if I uncheck "Enable Audio" in Settings, and likewise if I leave "Enable Audio" checked but change Host Audio Driver from "Windows DirectSound" to "Null Audio Driver".

Oddly, if I reboot the host computer, the problem doesn't occur immediately, but recurs within some period of time. I wish I knew what caused it to start happening. Once the problem happens, I cannot boot the guest successfully until I disable the audio or reboot the host.

Please let me know if I can provide any other information.

Thanks in advance!

[rptmatrox]

I´m Having the same issue with windows 10 as host and windows 7 as guest. have to disable sound in VM config to run properly. Sometimes the VM start BUT the Host crashes the Windows Audio Services. And the red X appears in the system tray audio icon. =/

As shown in this print: ​https://i.imgur.com/qmpQwEz.png

Thankyou.

[Socratis]

Could you both 'GabeLager' and 'rptmatrox' update to version 5.1.28 that just came out? It contains a lot of audio fixes.

[Bubbie]

Thanks, socratis. I just upgraded to 5.1.28 and will update the ticket once I've let it "cook" for a couple days (or sooner if the issue recurs).

[Bubbie]

socratis, just a couple of updates here.

I don't seem to experience the problem in 5.1.28. But I'm not entirely sure whether it was a driver update that fixed it, or VirtualBox 5.1.28.

After opening the ticket, but before 5.1.28 was available, I found an update for the problematic audio hardware, "Intel(R) Display Audio" (with Device Manager Hardware ID HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_8086&DEV_2806&SUBSYS_80860101&REV_1000). This driver is a couple years newer than the one I was using when I reported the issue. The new driver is dated 9/9/2014 with version number 6.16.0.3154.

So, in my specific case, the issue looks to be resolved.

Unfortunately, version 5.1.28 introduces an unrelated problem with networking that makes the VM largely unusable. But I'll investigate that separately.

Thank you.

[Bubbie]

I took the time to verify that indeed it is the VirtualBox upgrade that resolves this problem for me (and not the audio driver upgrade).

But, unfortunately, I have precisely the problem described at ​https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=84746 , so I had to downgrade to 5.1.24, where neither problem exists.

[Bubbie]

The subject of this ticket continues to be fixed in VirtualBox 5.1.30, as is the networking problem introduced in 5.1.28, so life is good!

It seems that we can close this. Thank you!

[pentagonik]

Great to hear, thanks for confirming / verifying! Closing.