No sound when attempting to install Windows 11, VMware Fusion-13.5.0

And the solution, ironically, is VOCR. Get through installation and install the tools, you get sound back.

I do hope this is a short-lived issue. It seems to be a Windows issue, Fusion didn't change at all, even though Apple have fixed that crashing bug (finally). I have not tried UTM with Windows again recently, so I don't know if it was affected similarly.

Good luck.

I ran into this problem while helping my friend install Windows 11 on his M1 MacBook Pro. If you don't want to use OCR, try connecting a USB audio device directly to the virtual machine. As far as I know, this is something Microsoft has to fix by adding drivers to the installation media, so the good old fallback of using a USB device should always work.

The sound issue requiring you to use an alternative means to install windows inside a VM exists inside of UTM as well.

Is it worth it to run windows as a VM on the newer MacBooks? I am going to need a new computer before long. I would like to use a Mac for the commonality of hardware, but I need windows for work. What are the known issues?

I have no idea if this works, as I don't have an Apple Silicon Mac. However, any USB audio device should technically work. I haven't found any that don't with Windows.

Hey guys,

Hope you're doing well.

I was planning to write a post about how I managed to be fully indipendent while installing windows since 2-3 months and... I've been lazy! :) So I'll reply here.

I haven't bought Fusion yet but now that I have the confirmation that the VO crashing bug is fixed I might give it a try.

As mentioned above I have an m2 pro mac with 3 usb c ports. This is important. Because I am a weird self-proclamed audiophile I always carry around either a usb c to jack or a usb a to jack adapter to use the windows base boost with 9db on every systems I can. Vocalizer voices and music sound amazing..... Anyway.

So I thought this bug was only due to utm although I could recall windows 10 as a host having the same narrator issue back in 2018 or so. So the solution is weird but it works.

I know that the topic is for vmware fusion but I think the bug is only from windows here. Both in VMs and on real computers, after windows installs all the drivers there is no such sound problem.

Solution

If you specifically have only usb c ports on your mac, don't guess and just purchase a usb c to jack and connect it hoping it'll solve that. I think it's technically possible but haven't found a reliable way. What you need to do instead is connect an usb a to jack adapter, to a usb a to usb c adapter plugged onto the mac, so the mac will actually detect it specifically as an external audio device that you could root to the guest vm while hearing voiceover and mac sound in your internal speaker. Then, with your earphones far from your ears (as you can't really control the volume as far as I know at this installation step), just turn on the narrator after rooting this external sound card to the vm and you'll hear the narrator and be able to proceed with the installation. It seems that with the emulation of x64 with utm narrator actually roots properly with whatever primary sound device but this thing is so slow that it's just not worth it having as the main vm, I wasn't able to bypass the tpm step with the iso from blind-help anyway.

So after the installation is complete and windoes is booted normally narrator should already work fine through mac speaker, if not just start narrator again and install the spice tools. Please be aware though , as I discover myself, the webdav .... network shared drive in the spice tools is broken specifically when you install office apps, you will have to uninstall it and get the x64 package from utm website and not the arm64.

Known issue(s)

@Cowboy Whether or not buying mac is worth it is beyond the scope of this topic but you should have a pretty good idea if you scroll through the feedbacks and applevise users feelings about macos and voiceover on this very website. I'd just say for now that don't expect it to be the same good, stable voiceover as ios, that's it. If you think so you'll be disappointed and willing to throw your mac to the nearest wall after... 1 month so you have a real experience with it. Generally though: academia? Not worth the pain honestly but I am surviving college life (non computer science program) with it since 2023 and just the battery life is definitely worth the purchase. Developer? Safe to go. DAW? I don't know the topic enough but if reaper sucks, worth buying mac. General entertainment / web browsing / web apps use? Absolutely not. Using only iWork suite? Yes.........

So about windows vm! :)

As I said, I have a windows vm alongside macos when voiceover sucks especially in word on mac or with math content (without braille display, the nuance is actually important here at the time of writing sonoma 14.3.1) and web browsing. Get the vm VO scripts for the numpad insert key emulated with capslock otherwise nvda narrator or jaws won't be working at all, somewhere on this site I'll put the link later. Remapping it to regular insert key doesn't work at least with nvda and narrator just so that you know. So this vm after innicial setup is reliable enough for me to do some of the class quizzes on it as long as I share mac folderswith smb or cloud storage not the utm shared drive even with x64 spice package. Word works well, chrome is incredibly fast for a virtual machine, ... You are only left with the left (and only) ctrl key. Right option (commander key by default) is windows, although I must have done something weird by mistake (good mistake) as since a week or two I just got the alt+ctrl combo with option so navigating table within is actually possible - I was messing around the dkeyboard remapping scripts mentioned before. Don't try to hit ctrl alt n (or any ctrl alt shortcuts) as this will be always be intercepted with voiceover. I haven't tried this with VO off though.

I just have a weird issue where I just stop hearing anything from the vm so I have to brut force restart it with utm controls sometimes. It seems to be an ew bug, I don't know what triggers it or if the innitial usb soundcard might help solving it.

Except that, if your vm is configured correctly, it's actually very fun to use macbook with with the cost of the battery obviously.

Pro tips: when allocating the disk space in utm disk creation go with the larger amount if you can as it's nearly impossible to allocate the new freed space again after, e.g. expending a 64gb virtual drive to 128gb. You have to reinstall the vm with the proper size to make sure everything actually works. (applevis community feel free to correct me on this)

VOCR

@overflowed buffer I confirm, I am never able to pass the license page with VOCR, both the latest 1.0 stable version and the alpha 2.x. You must have narrator.

This message is messed up, lengthy, but I hope it's at least readable

Cheers

Just to clarify, this is fixed in the current Apple beta for 14.4, and VMWare have just issued a security fix for Fusion but confirmed that they didn't fix this themselves, it was an Apple problem. So you must run the beta MacOS till 14.4 comes out.

Yes, this worked before. The latest Windows build simply broke it.

And I've no idea why a USB-C audio device wouldn't work—that's weird—but using any type A audio device will always work because it's using a generic Windows audio USB driver. Thanks for reminding me about that! The simple fixes still work ...

As to whether it's worth it: sigh. That's all I have to say about it. You just need to accept that this is no ordinary x86-64 box, and this is the fallback plan. The biggest bummer is that JAWS Braille drivers are non-existent except for Focus, obviously. You'd need to be primarily a macOS and Linux user. Which, happily, is the case for me, but perhaps not for you.