Audio Not Working In Boot Camp
I’ve been running Boot Camp on my Early-2016 12-inch MacBook for almost two years and it has worked well enough for my specific use case. Performance isn’t great but it gets the job done. It’s a base model 12-inch MacBook with an Intel 1.1GHz Dual Core Intel Core m3 processor with 8GB RAM and 256GB of flash storage currently running macOS Monterey natively and the latest version of Windows 10 Pro in Boot Camp.
One day, I needed to get on an audio call using Slack and realized audio wasn’t working. I did some troubleshooting but just couldn’t get the audio to work. I then tried Microsoft Teams and again, audio wasn’t working. I then tried playing audio and video clips and again, no audio. I checked the audio settings in Windows 10 Pro and made sure the proper output device was selected and audio was not muted. Everything appeared to be fine; however, there was no audio.
I decided to give the MacBook a reboot and booted back into Windows 10 Pro (Boot Camp). I tested the audio again, but nothing. Since I had recently connected earphones to the MacBook via the 3.5mm jack, I decided to check to make sure there wasn’t an issue with the 3.5mm jack. Again, no audio using earphones and no audio using the speakers. It was strange and puzzling!
I then decided to reboot again but this time into macOS. At the time I was still running macOS Big Sur.
After rebooting, I tested audio in macOS Big Sur and audio was working fine so clearly the issue wasn’t a hardware issue but something Boot Camp, software or driver-related. I proceeded to reboot the computer but this time, booting back into Windows 10 Pro (Boot Camp). After the reboot, audio was working fine in Windows 10 Pro. Very odd!
The next day, I ran into the same issue where audio again was not working in Windows 10 Pro (Boot Camp). I proceeded to reboot in macOS Big Sur, tested the audio (it was working fine) and then rebooted into Windows 10 Pro and audio was working fine. Strange and peculiar, to say the least!
I went through the same song and dance for the next few days trying to isolate and figure out why this was happening. macOS Big Sur was up-to-date. Windows 10 Pro was up-to-date. Boot Camp was up-to-date (or as up-to-date as possible running on this 12-inch MacBook) and all the device drivers were up-to-date. Why was this happening?
After going through the cycle of having to always reboot into macOS Big Sur then reboot into Windows 10 Pro (Boot Camp) to resolve the issue, it FINALLY dawned on me what the issue might be, and I have the Apple startup chime to thank!
Hearing the Apple startup chime every time I booted into macOS Big Sur but not when booting into Windows 10 Pro (Boot Camp) made me think the issue might have to do with how I have the startup disk configured in macOS Big Sur. Since I’ve been primarily using Windows 10 Pro on this 12-inch MacBook, I set the startup disk to always boot from the Boot Camp partition rather than the macOS partition. There must be some driver or extension related to audio that is enabled on startup when booting into macOS first that isn’t enabled on startup when booting into Windows 10 Pro (Boot Camp) first that may be causing the issue.
Obviously, this shouldn’t happen by design and it may not affect other versions of Boot Camp on other Mac configurations but at least for this configuration, it is a problem. I decided to put this theory to the test by changing the startup disk back to macOS Big Sur then rebooting the computer. On reboot, after hearing the Apple startup chime, I held down the option key to get the boot options and selected the Windows 10 Pro (Boot Camp) partition.
After booting into Windows 10 Pro, I tested the audio and it worked perfectly. Truly bizarre but that seemed to solve the issue. Granted, I always must hold down the option key on startup to select the Boot Camp partition to boot from (otherwise, it will defaultly boot into macOS) but I rather perform this extra step than to have to constantly reboot the computer into macOS first then reboot into Windows 10 Pro (Boot Camp) in order for audio to work.
With Apple’s migration to Apple Silicon nearly complete and the likelihood Boot Camp will be phased out, it’s unlikely there will be a fix but who knows. For now, I’m glad I was able to figure out the cause of this bizarre audio issue in Boot Camp.