Guest VM Audio Support under Hyper-V

One of the limitations with Hyper-V is the fact that guest VM don’t have any built-in audio support. For most server implementations this really isn’t a problem because servers don’t typically need any sound support. However, servers aren’t the only types of guest operating systems that are supported under Hyper-V. In fact, desktop operating systems like the various flavors of Windows XP and Windows Vista make up a good chuck of the operating system that Microsoft supports as guests under Hyper-V.  Many of the desktop applications are built assuming audio support is available. So how do you get audio under Hyper-V?

Jeff Wosley, Senior Program Manager in virtualization, recently shared with us a cool tip showing how  you can get guest audio support by using Remote Desktop to connect to the guest. For guest audio support configure your RDP session using the following steps.

1. Launch the Remote Desktop Connection Client.
2. Click on the General tab and in the Computer prompt enter the IP address or system name of the VM guest that you want to connect to.
3. Click on the Local Resources tab.
4. Use the Remote computer sound dropdown to select Bring to this computer. This allows the RDP session to send the sound from the remote system to your local system.
5. Click on Connect to connect to the remote client or click the General tab and choose the Save button to save your settings.

This works on Hyper-V and Virtual Server 2005