I recently migrated my home computer and notebook to Windows Server 2008 64bit from Windows XP. My home computer has an Asus PK5-E motherboard with onboard sound (HD audio) and its SPDIF port is connected to my home receiver. All audio/sounds plays fine and I have no problems when I'm logged on directly to this computer. However, if I attempt to RDP into this computer, from my notebook, all audio is disabled and my Audio/Speaker icon in the system tray has a red X and a tooltip of "No Audio Output Device is installed". As well, if I log in directly and start an audio application like Foobar and then go to my notebook and RDP into the computer, the audio stream is stopped.

I have tried the following without success:

1) When connecting with the RDP client I set the 'Remote computer sound' setting on the 'Local Resources' tab to 'Leave at remote computer'
2) Opened the 'Terminal Services Configuration' applet (Start->Administrative Tools->Terminal Services), double-clicked the RDP-tcp Connection and unchecked Audio from the Client Settings tab
3) Opened the 'Group Policy Editor' applet (Start->Run->gpedit.msc) and navigated to Computer Configuration->Administrative Templates->Windows Components->Terminal Services->Terminal Server->Device and Resource Redirection and set the 'Allow Audio Redirection' policy to Enabled.
4) After trying the native Server 2008 HD audio drivers, I tried the Soundmax audio drivers from the ASUS site

I understand that other remote clients like VNC may work but I'd really like to solve this issue when using RDP. I'm not sure what else I can do and any additional help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance

This post has been edited by cipher7: Apr 4 2008, 01:32 AM

Are you meaning to play the sounds on the Server 2008 machine? Because these steps (this one in particular) will ensure that is what happens...

'cluberti, this is what I'm trying to do as I use my home computer as a media center and all my audio files are located on it. Unfortunately, no audio is available when I connect via RDP which prevents me from playing any music which I was able to do when I used XP. Also, I've verified that VNC does work perfectly but unfortunately it is a much slower interfce than Microsoft's RDP.

I'm not sure what else this can be. Maybe this is a Server 2008 bug with RDP or even an issue when using the 64bit version with RDP?

This post has been edited by cipher7: Apr 4 2008, 11:23 AM

Does audio work on that box when you're at the console?

Yea, I had mentioned this in the first post. When I'm logged on directly to the console, all audio works perfectly. Therefore,

Logged on directly to console - works perfectly
Logged on remotely with VNC - works perfectly
Logged on remotely with RDP - no audio

I even tried the "console/admin' login via RDP which is supposed to mimic logging onto the console session and this doesn't work either.

Well, /console in RDP to a Vista or 2008 box does nothing, because there is no console session anymore. That seems a little odd, and I'd expect it to work if it does at the console - if you redirect audio to YOUR box over RDP, does that work? Probably worth finding out if the audio channel over RDP is broken or not...

Actaully there is a "console" session in 2008 but it now accessed by using the /admin switch rather than the /console switch.

Redirecting audio to my notebook, by seletcting 'Bring to this computer', does work which makes this even more frustrating to understand.

Well, I'm not going to get into a p***ing match about the console session, but /admin doesn't do exactly what you think it does - it's only for allowing admin connectins to a TS in non-Admin mode, a full TS server, without consuming a TS or device CAL. The switch also allows connections when a TS is in drain mode. All sessions in Vista and 2008 are virtualized, there is no more "console" session that you can log into. However, it's not relevant to your problem, so I'll drop that now.


As to the sound, you at least know that the sound is working over RDP from the Vista box - is this Vista SP1 or RTM?

Thanks for the info, cluberti. I wasn't aware of the differences and that session 0 access was no longer provided or needed from RDP in Vista/Server 2008.


Here are my operating systems:

Home computer - Windows Server 2008 x64 RTM
Notebook - Windows Server 2008 x64 RC0

Also, I have an older computer running XP SP2 and when I used this computer to RDP into my home computer the audio was still not available.

Hmmm - I'd like to see what happens with an RDP 6.1 client, but if the same failed with XP SP2 that would indicate a problem with the listener at the server end. I hate to say it would be time to contact Microsoft for help, but you do get some free support with that Server 2008 license. Since it might be a bug, you'd probably want to contact them directly at this point, since you know the client side of things did indeed work...

Has a solution to this issue been found? I'm having the same one.

I still haven't found a solution wihen using RDP. Unfortunately, I've been too busy recently so for now I'm using VNC.

Hopefully, Microsoft is aware of this issue and are working on a fix.

I might have a solution.

There might be a limitation that a RDP server can not be rebooted without local login more than once a day. But since I don¨t wan't to hook up a monitor and keyboard a quick workaround is to enable automatic login using Tweak UI (think it must have admin rights). This however results in that session 0 (console) loades the audio-driver or mixer. But when you connect using RDP another session (session 1) will be started and thus results in windows complaining that "can not load driver" due the fact that it has already been loaded.

To get around this try connecting to session 0. In WinXP3 + Vista this was previously available through mstsc.exe /console. But it has been replaced with mstsc.exe /admin. Read more about it here http://blog.shijaz.com/2008/01/no-more-mstscexe-console.html .

Using mstsc.exe /admin I confirmed that the driver was correcly loaded. Now I moved the sound mixer loader to my custom user¨s startmenu / startup directory. You might have to change that user's permissions to be able to load drivers.

All this assumes you´ve changed the mstsc "bring sound to.." feature as well as changed the RDP settings on the server which by default is set to disabled.

good luck!