Forum Discussion
Windows 11 only get audio when login to system
Hello,
So our deployment is unique but system does not sleep or hibernate that has been disabled. but the following post is what we are seeing review. Thank you again.
My company produces audio DSP software that runs as a Windows background service. A fairly common customer use case is to use the PC for audio DSP while there is no active user session in the UI. We have observed that Windows 11 mutes all audio devices (including the built-in headphone jack) if no users are logged in to the UI. Is there a setting or registry value that could be changed to allow audio to pass whether or not a user is logged in? Note that we have not observed this issue on PCs running Windows 10, this appears to be unique to Windows 11
2 Replies
This is a known behavior in Windows 11 where audio is muted or disabled when no user is logged in. Unlike Windows 10, Windows 11 ties audio session activation more strictly to the user session.
To work around it, try running your DSP service as "Local System" with "Allow service to interact with desktop" enabled, or use audio device activation APIs that don’t require an active user session. There’s no official registry fix yet, but these methods can help maintain audio output without user login.
I have the same issue. It seems like the system only allows accessibility applications to output Audio in that state (like Narrator / On Screen Keyboard)
