Enable Audio in Windows VPS

To enable Windows VPS audio, first we need to allow sound and audio redirection from group policy.

1) Allowing Redirecting Sounds In Group Policy

To do so, type in “Group Policy” in the start search bar of your Windows VPS, and you will see “Edit Group policy” option appearing as follows. Next, click on “Edit Group Policy”

Next, on the Local Group Policy Editor Window, navigate to Computer Configuration->Administrative Templates-> Windows Components-> Remote Desktop Services-> Remote Desktop Session Host->Device and Resource Redirection.

Double click on the option Allow Audio and Video Playback Redirection:

On the next Window, select Enabled, click "Apply" to confirm your settings and then click OK.

Next, reboot the server. When the system is up again, you would see the icon for controlling sound volume and information about the redirection in the notification bar is been enabled. Now, the server settings are finished.

As you can see that after the reboot, the notification shown on the sound icon is stating that “The Audio Service is not running”, hence for this stage we need to configure the Windows Audio Service. For this part, please refer to the second part below.

2) Configure Windows Audio Service

To launch/enable the Services in Windows Server 2008, navigate to Start-> Administrative Tools->Services.

You can also launch the Services window via Run menu as follows(for both Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2012 Systems)

Logged into your VPS via Remote Desktop, press Windows key + R. This key combination will launch the Run menu.

In Run menu, type 'services.msc' and hit enter.

This will launch the Services Window. Locate the Windows Audio Endpoint Builder, right click on it and select the “Properties” option.

At the Windows Audio Endpoint Builder Properties Section, set “Startup type” to Automatic and click on “Apply” to apply the settings. After that, click on the “Start” button the start the service.

Next, click on “Ok”

Next, at the Services page, double click on Windows Audio to open the Windows Audio properties page.

At the “Windows Audio Properties” page, set “Startup Type” to Automatic, after that, click on “Apply” and click on “Start” to start the service.

Once, the “Windows Audio” service has been started, we can see that windows audio has been enabled and there is sound output from the Windows VPS as shown in the figure below: