cannot install HD audio driver in XP guest

[nbi]

The driver installation of the RealTek Intel HD Audio driver fails in Windows XP guest. This driver installs correctly natively. This means the virtualization for the HD audio device is faulty.

This is for a Windows XP (SP2) guest running on Debian Linux host. uname -a Linux nehalem 4.9.2 #1 SMP Wed Jan 11 15:36:50 CST 2017 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[Frank Mehnert]

For Windows XP just use the AC97 audio device emulation. HD audio is the preferred audio device for Vista or later.

[Frank Mehnert]

To explain this a little bit more in detail: The devices which are emulated your virtual machine have nothing to do with the physical devices of your host. So even if you have some RealTek HD audio on your host, the (virtual) AC97 audio device is still the correct choice for your guest. VirtualBox is just another process on your host which makes use of the sound abstraction provided by your host operating system.

[nbi]

Please try to be conversant in the subject before posting such ill informed comments. To begin with AC97 is an ancient practically obsolete sound standard dating back to 1997 (Windows 2000). It was superseded by HD in the early 2000s. Windows XP HD drivers have been around for years. There are actually discussions about this in the VirtualBox forum. VirtualBox has simply chosen not to support HD in XP which IMHO is a poor decision given XP's staying power and popularity. Why does VirtualBox present the HD device in the settings if HD is unsupported??

I was eventually able to get AC97 audio working, but it took selecting an invalid sound driver (SoundBlaster), unselecting it, and then re-selecting AC97. Something seems amiss with how the virtualized sound interfaces are made available to the guest OS.

[Michael Thayer]

I think that Frank was talking about the best VirtualBox settings for a Windows XP guest. It probably would be possible to get XP working with HD Audio, but that would mean spending less effort on other things which we judge need the effort more. AC97 seems to be fine for most XP users, and in particular I am not aware of any feedback from paying customers about this, who are a better barometer for us as we have a better picture of them than of non-paying users.

[Frank Mehnert]

nbi, my comment was not ill informed at all. The preferred sound device for Windows XP is AC97 , it always was and there is no reason to change that. Just start a default Windows XP installation with the default AC97 device and it will work flawlessly. The fact that there are HD audio device drivers available for Windows XP does not matter.

[Frank Mehnert]

And, btw, you are talking about AC97 being an ancient practically obsolete sound standard. Windows XP is not supported any longer, it's ancient and it works fine with the ancient AC97 sound standard. I see no reason to invest any time to adapt the HD audio device to make it better work with the ancient and obsolete Windows XP operating system.

If you want to contribute, feel free to do so and we will certainly consider adding your contribution if it fulfils the requirements.

[nbi]

Ok Schlaumeier, by addressing this issue VirtualBox would be fixing an omission - one that should never have been made in the first place! Still waiting for an answer to my question: Why does VirtualBox present the HD device in the settings if HD is unsupported??

As for XP being ancient - yes, but not as ancient as AC97. And no, AC97 most certainly does not work flawlessly by default. That was covered in another ticket, but this one is about HD.

I'm contributing by creating tickets for issues. Most software producers want feedback to improve their software so I don't think your attitude is representative of VirtualBox/Oracle.

[Michael Thayer]

Unsupported for XP guests. We make decisions about how to invest our available developer time. We chose to invest time to make HD audio work well with the drivers provided by later versions of Windows but now those provided by XP. In theory we could have done that too, but something else would have suffered for it for no reasonable benefit visible to us. As the software is open source, if enough people disagree it should not be a problem to get someone to write a patch fixing this, though if you do that please co-ordinate it with us.

[Michael Thayer]

In case it is still not clear though, our priority is not to provide perfect emulation of hardware but to make it possible to run various virtual systems. Clearly your priorities differ and I am sorry about that, but I'm afraid we can not change ours because of that.

[Socratis]

Replying to the original description:

The driver installation of the RealTek Intel HD Audio driver fails in Windows XP guest. This driver installs correctly natively. This means the virtualization for the HD audio device is faulty.

Not a logical conclusion I'm afraid. It would be better if you were to take into consideration that Windows XP does not support natively the Intel HDA family of cards. Also, did you check the VendorID, ProductID and Subsystem values of the driver that failed to install correctly? There are a lot of different combinations out there and you may not have picked the correct one.

Replying to comment 3:

VirtualBox has simply chosen not to support HD in XP which IMHO is a poor decision given XP's staying power and popularity.

A "poor choice" to not support the Intel HDA cards? Something that is not supported natively by Windows XP itself? When on the other hand AC97 is right out of the box? Can you imagine the number of support queries/complaints/tickets that this decision would bring?

Replying to comment 7:

Why does VirtualBox present the HD device in the settings if HD is unsupported??

VirtualBox does not modify its options based on the template selected. It gives you the default choices when you make your initial setup, but after that, you're free to test things at your heart's desire. Even break things...

Replying to comment 7:

I'm contributing by creating tickets for issues.

Some people would call it useless and unwanted noise, but I do not support nor endorse those opinions personally.

[Frank Mehnert]

Re comment:7:

1. Which attitude? To ask users to contribute code to an open source project? Is that request that insulting?
2. You denote me as 'Schlaumeier'? I don't think your attitude is appropriate for a user pretenting to contribute helpful information.
3. Why does VirtualBox present the HD device in the settings id HD is unsupported? It is certainly supported for many guests. We never tested HD audio properly for Windows XP guests.
4. AC97 is default for Windows XP and it works properly here. The OS default settings reflect combinations which are supposed to work. Other combinations are possible but expect problems for unusual combinations. For example the HD audio device for a Windows XP guests is an unusual combination.

[Frank Mehnert]

Removed the last inappropriate comment. Please calm down and stop the discussion here.

[Michael Thayer]

I will nonetheless assume that the deleted comment was meant in a reasonable way and try to answer it. I will not answer further though unless I think that there is something genuinely new to say.

The reason I looked at HD was because AC97 wasn't working properly.

Many people have found AC97 to work well with XP guests. If you do not then that is what should be looked at.

If HD would not have been shown as an option in the settings I would have concluded it's not available and I wouldn't have filed this ticket.

As Socratis pointed out, the choice of guest type simply decides which settings are chosen initially. Choosing XP automatically selects AC97, which works for many (I suspect most) people but does not hide HD audio which works for many people for other guest types. We could have hidden it but chose and choose not to.

Neither I nor anyone else is expecting "perfect emulation", but we do reasonably expect that your software does what it explicitly indicates in the GUI. If an HD option is shown reasonable people would interpret that as meaning it's supported.

Which indeed it is, but not for XP guests, see above. With a different driver it might work in XP too. This is our choice, not our mistake.