How to permanently mute sound in Windows 11 VM?

Hello,

Thank you for posting your question on our forum.

Yes, you can automate muting sound in your Windows 11 VM using a PowerShell script.

For automation to persist across reboots, use a PowerShell script with scheduled task or startup integration.

The sound often resets because something (policy, driver, or VM config) restores default values during boot.

Here are the solutions:

1) Mute Sound Using PowerShell

- The simplest script to mute system volume uses "SendKeys" via a COM object:

(New-Object -ComObject wscript.shell).SendKeys([char]173)

This sends the "Mute" key press to Windows.

- Alternatively, you can turn down the volume completely with:

For ($i=0; $i -lt 50; $i++) { (New-Object -ComObject wscript.shell).SendKeys([char]174) }

This sends enough "Volume Down" keys to set to 0%.

2) Run Automatically on Startup

To prevent manual execution and keep the VM sound consistently muted:

a) Save your chosen script (e.g., mute.ps1) to a known location.

b) Open Task Scheduler in Windows and create a new task:

- Trigger: "At startup"/"At logon"

- Action: "Start a Program", with "powershell.exe" as the program and - File "C:\path\to\mute.ps1" as the arguments.

3) Alternative solutions

a) Use the open-source module "AudioDeviceCmdlets" for more robust control with:

Import-Module .\AudioDeviceCmdlets.dll Set-DefaultAudioDeviceMute Set-DefaultAudioDeviceVolume 0

These commands allow you to set volume to zero, not just mute.

b) Some virtualization platforms allow disabling audio at the VM configuration level, which can permanently ensure no audio device is available (sometimes more reliable than software mute).

If your volume keeps resetting to 100% at each boot, and scripts do not persist, consider disabling the audio device in Device Manager (within the VM) or in the hypervisor settings.

If you need further assistance, please don't hesitate to contact us!