Boot Camp + Mac Pro = no sound through speakers

Same issue here. Anyone know how to resolve this? I've seen other posts about it, but seemingly no resolution.

By the way, I can't express how damned frustrating this is. All over the web, people have this same issue, and there appears to be no solution for it. How did Apple screw this up so badly??

Try this: (this is for XP, not sure if it's the same for Vista)

Boot into Windows, open Control Panel, System, Device Manager. Scroll on down to the CD\DVD drive. Right click on the drive and select properties.

In the dialog that opens you'll see a statement that says something like

"Enable Digital CD Audio for this device...." make sure that box is checked off.

That will direct the sound to the Line Out on most sound cards and should work the same for the MBP. The only other suggestion I can give you in order to get the sound working is to obtain a later Windows driver from the sound chip maker.

Regards.

No go. Tried new drivers too, nothing. I noticed the RealTek software can detect when I plug in headphones, and that works, but it can't detect something being plugged into the back of the MacPro (line out). Hmm..maybe my line out jack is messed up? (hardware)

Just curious, if you unplug your speakers from the line out on the back of the Mac Pro, does the "Line Out" option in your sound prefs disappear? (see below)

No optical audio out in Boot Camp

I'm having the same problem... optical out works fine in Mac OS X but nada in Windows XP...

Grr...

mine is the same way...audio comes from the internal speaker and not the speakers connected to the analog audio output on the back of the Mac Pro. I found an option to disable the internal speaker, and when I do that, I get no noise from the machine at all. Pretty lame.

Surprised there's no fix for this... other than to temporarily plug your speakers into the headphone jack..

CaptSaltyJack said:

Surprised there's no fix for this... other than to temporarily plug your speakers into the headphone jack..

Click to expand...

That would be a good solution but unfortunately that does not work either. Running Vista in BC and I get no sound from internal/external speakers....


Peace

Plugging the speakers into headphone jack works for me. Annoying to have to do it though.

The problem with this is, it's CLEARLY a Boot Camp problem, but it's too easy for Apple to brush it off, like "oh well that's Windows, we don't support that." No, Windows would work fine normally.. Boot Camp's drivers are screwy.

There Is A Way Guys

You "just" insert your OS X Leopard install disk 1 into you diskdrive (running in vista).

- double click on the cd, Bootcamp for windows ask for permission to be installed, say YES. It then installs ALL your drivers, everything from soundcard, bluetooth and mouse.

Now I have sound, bluetooth and a bootcamp, and I can tell it to reboot into OS X or Vista if I like, if I'm running in Vista.

Don't know if bootcamp is on older versions of OS X install disk, this is my first macbook, but hey if a newbie can, then everybody can.

God luck folks.

Pretty sure I tried reinstalling the Bootcamp drivers in Windows, didn't help.

Again im a newbie, but with my macbook everything worked smoothly.

nowo83 said:

Again im a newbie, but with my macbook everything worked smoothly.

Click to expand...

Of course, man The MacBook has built-in speakers. And a headphone jack, which would work fine, too. This issue only applies to the Mac Pro, which has a line-out in the back for speakers. Bootcamp doesn't recognize the line-out jack.

aaah there's the difference, I'm sorry I just barged in then .

have you tried?

This may be too simplistic (or I may have missed that you did this), but have you tried going to XP Control Panel/Sound & Audio Devices/Volume/Speaker Settings/Advanced, and then selecting a different speaker assignment there? Getting my sound to work through my speakers was tied in with the baseline setting there.

I can try poking around again, but I doubt it will work. The bottom line issue here is, Bootcamp on the Mac Pro is flawed, and Apple won't admit it. It doesn't recognize the line-out jack.

Well...sometimes there is sound!

Hi

I've been having the same problems as others. I tried all of the various suggestions here - thanks for posting helpful suggestions - but nothing fixed the problem. Still no sound. However, at Christmas I unplugged everything from my Mac Pro and locked it away before going on holiday. When I returned 10 days later I got my Mac Pro set up again, plugged all the cables back in again and booted it up into OS X. Everything worked fine including my Soundsticks (they always work in OS X anyway) Then I rebooted into Windows by holding down the Alt key and when I logged in to Windows I heard the XP login tune playing through my Soundsticks, which were plugged into the rear Audio Jack socket - the Line Out!!
So, without installing anything extra, the audio suddenly started working from Windows on my Mac Pro. So, I am convinced that the problem has nothing to do with drivers or service pack version of XP, etc. I was able to shut the Mac down completely, boot between OSes, etc without losing the sound in Windows. Game playing was back and sounding better than ever on Windows!
Further to this, the sound worked beautifully on Windows for about 8 days until one day I needed to access the rear of my MacPro to plug something in to a USB socket. I gently eased the Mac forward slightly to allow me to get my hand in round the back of the Mac and as I did that, a little bubble message popped up in Windows. It said "An audio Jack has been unplugged" . "No it hasn't" I thought to myself but I checked to see if the jack had been disturbed by me moving the Mac slightly, but it was in fully. The sound had gone again
I booted into OS X and the sound worked perfectly. I booted back into Windows again, no external sound, just back to the horrible tinny sound of the internal speaker. So I shut down, unplugged everything, left it for a while to simulate the conditions under which I got it to work before, plugged it all back in again but no joy. I'm back to having no sound again in Windows. Damn!
What I can tell you though, is that it IS possible to get the sound working without messing about with drivers or enabling anything in Windows Control Panels. If I get it working again I will report back. In the meantime, if anyone else has managed to get their sound working in XP, please please let me know how
Thanks
Col

Wow, thanks for sharing that! It's confusing though.. it makes it sound like when you moved the Mac, the line out stopped working, so it makes me think it's a hardware defect. But if the line out only fails when in Windows, that can't be a faulty line out jack or a bad connection.

The sad thing, which I think I've mentioned before, is that Apple won't support this because they say they don't support Windows. They won't accept my claim that it's not a Windows problem, it's a Boot Camp problem. Sigh..

I've had my fair share of problems with Boot Camp. Then I discovered VMWare Fushion, and it works flawlessly. I downloaded the trial, but now i'm thinking about purchasing it.

Here's a link to the site: http://www.vmware.com/products/fusion/

It took the headache out of boot camp for me. Maybe you'll have some luck with it too, It helped me run XP without partitioning my hard drive and i'm even booting XP from an external HD.

I actually did recently ditch Parallels for VMware Fusion. I like it a lot better, but haven't tried Windows games with it yet. I'll have to give it a shot and see how it performs. Boot Camp has always been the best way to play intensive 3D games, but I don't know how VMware Fusion will fare...

Believe it or not, it runs pretty smoothly at medium-full specs on my MBP.

Bioshock gave me some problems, but games like Medal of Honor, etc. worked perfectly.

I'd say out of the 5 or so games i've tried on my MBP w/ VMware fushion, 2 would lag a bit, but would pick up on medium graphic settings, and the other 3 ran fine at full.

A lot of fun!

And I can ditch my 2005 PC entirely now

Good advice thanks

Thanks for commenting guys. It's interesting to hear about VMWare. I used to use Virtual PC but that was hopeless for games. Mind you it wasn't much better for general Windows tasks. You could make toast in the time it took to mount a CD

I have Parallels Desktop 3 but again it is too slow. I see 4 is out but I'm not taking the risk of upgrading & now you've said VMWare is good with Windows games I'm happy with that

As CaptSaltyJack says, moving the mac and losing the connection smacks of faulty socket but I agree with him that when in OS X, having perfect sound disproves that. I read on another forum that someone had linked the audio problem with the Optical sound output having a light on - suggesting that the audio was being routed through the Digital Out. He said that he poked a straightened paper clip in the socket (CAREFULLY) until the light went out and then the audio burst into life from the Line Out to his external speakers

I could also see a light from my Optical socket but couldn't bring myself to put anything in the socket!

Confusion reigns

Star Wars: KOTOR crashes in VMware Fusion. SO much for that