Enabling audio on a Windows Server 2012 system

If I moved the mouse pointer over the icon, I saw "The Audio Service is not running."

By default, Windows Server 2012 doesn't have the audio service enabled, likely because it won't be needed on many servers, which may not even have speakers attached to them. You can enable the service by several different methods.

One method is to move the mouse pointer to the lower, left-hand corner of the screen until the Windows Start button appears then right-click on it and choose Run. Then type services.msc and hit Enter then scroll down through the list of services until you see Windows Audio.

Double-click on Windows Audio to open a Windows Audio Properties window. The startup type will be set to "Manual"; change the setting to Automatic.

Then to start the service, click on the Start button. If you only wanted to start the service once and didn't want it running all the time, you could just click on the Start button without changing the setting from manual to automatic. You could then stop the service by just clicking on the Stop button. If you haven't changed the setting to "automatic", the service won't restart if the system is rebooted.

Once the audio service is started, the icon for audio in the notification area should change to one that shows a speaker without the red circle containing a white "x".

Right-click on the icon of the speaker with the red circle containing a white "x" next to the speaker and choose Playback devices.

You will then see a window open titled "Audio Service Not Running" with the message "This computer cannot play audio because the Windows Audio Service is not enabled. Would you like to enable the Windows Audio Service?"

Click on Yes, which will open a Sound window where you can click on OK. The speaker icon in the notification area will change to one without the red circle containing the white "x" when you click on Yes.

You should then be able to play MP3 files and hear audio on web pages. This also changes the startup type for the Audiosrv audio service from manual to automatic, so it will start each time the system is booted, and starts the service running, which you can see if you run services.msc and scroll down to "Windows Audio".

You can also start and stop the audio service at will by using the net start audiosrv and net stop audiosrv commands from a command prompt. To do so, move the mouse pointer to the lower, left-hand corner of the screen until the Windows Start button appears then right-click on it and chooose Command Prompt (Admin) (you need to choose the command prompt option with "Admin" in the title rather than just Command Prompt). You can then enter the commands at the command line.

C:\Windows\system32>net start audiosrv
The Windows Audio service is starting.
The Windows Audio service was started successfully.


C:\Windows\system32>net stop audiosrv
The Windows Audio service is stopping.
The Windows Audio service was stopped successfully.

This method allows you to easily start and stop the service when you wish, but doesn't affect whether the service runs after a reboot. If you haven't changed the startup type from manual to automatic by one of the first two methods, the audio service won't start when the system is booted. If you have set the startup type to automatic, if you issue the command

net stop
audiosrv

, the service will restart after a reboot.

You can determine if the Windows Audio Service, audiosrv, is running from the command line by issuing the command

net start |
find "Windows Audio"

. If it is running, the command will return "Windows Audio" and "Windows Audio Endpoint Builder" as shown below. If it is not, you may see "Windows Audio Endpoint Builder" returned, but not "Windows Audio" as shown below:

C:\Windows\system32>net start | find "Windows Audio"
   Windows Audio
   Windows Audio Endpoint Builder

C:\Windows\system32>net stop audiosrv
The Windows Audio service is stopping.
The Windows Audio service was stopped successfully.


C:\Windows\system32>net start | find "Windows Audio"
   Windows Audio Endpoint Builder

You can also start and stop the service by using

net start "Windows
Audio"

and net stop "Windows Audio", i.e., you can use "Windows Audio", which is the "display name" for the service rather than the service name Audiosrv.

C:\Windows\system32>net start "Windows Audio"
The Windows Audio service is starting.
The Windows Audio service was started successfully.


C:\Windows\system32>net stop "Windows Audio"
The Windows Audio service is stopping.
The Windows Audio service was stopped successfully.