Windows 11 Bluetooth no sound/microphone and crashing

I have the same issue:

1.) Earbuds connect and work on Mac, Android, Windows 10

2.) Earbuds connect but don't work on Windows 11 (tried on multiple machines)

It is very obvious that Windows 11 has serious issues with class compliant bluetooth earbuds & headphones working properly. It seems that Win 11 is not capable of recognizing the correct audio sample rate (it is setting them at 48kHz instead of 44.1Khz). Once it even set it at 12khz (audio cassette quality). There is no way to set it manually. First you incapacitate us, dont allow us to fix things manually, at the same time you fail to fix your flawed auto-recognizing feature. If you can't handle new features, don't introduce them.

Instead of posting standard copy and paste bluettooh troubleshooting answers that don't work, it would be time Microsoft acknowledges that the problem lies in their OS and finally directs one of their 163,000 employess to look into and fix this major connectivity restraint.

That Windows 11 cannot even properly connect to class compliant hardward is pathetic. You should have never released this banana OS.

Please MS, stop wasting everybody's time!

JUST FIX THE PROBLEM!

PS: I worked with every OS Microsoft has every written. The only one that ever worked without a flaw was MS DOS on the Apple IIc. Everything else that came afterwards was always headache, headache and headache. I must have spend two years of my time in man-hours just fixing issues on Microsoft's operating systems. MS is stealing our valuable time and no one is compensating us for it!

I finally gave up and did an install of windows 10 from a thumb drive in order to revert back away from Windows 11. Ridiculous that is the course of action I had to take but Microsoft seemed to give me no other option. I am much happier now as things generally work.

Constantly ignoring all of the prompts now on Windows 10 that encourage me to upgrade to Windows 11....haha not a chance!

@IdoGR: This is great stuff. I tried your fix, and skipped part 1, since you hadn't tested going straight to part 2. Anyhow, I'm happy to report that the "Day to Day use" steps below were enough to get me a successfully completed Teams video chat this morning. I have another meeting, with Google Meet, scheduled in 20 minutes, and will try it again, but this seems to be a magic fix.

@Microsoft: I get the sense this thread has been left to rot. Shame, since this affects many users, and given what your users have figured out on their own, there's already a fix, even if it's not ideal. Using what we already know, you should've been able to patch this many times over at this point.

I think I might have some sort of a solution!

I've been using it for the last couple of hours and it seems to work!

This solution only enables me to use the headphones on hands-free mode (the mode with the low quality audio + mic) so it's not suitable for listening to music or anything like that.

Basically the idea is to trick windows to use the mic all the time, that way the auto switch to audio mode (which was introduced in win11 - see here, and I believe is the one causing this issue) won't trigger and the headphones will remain in the hands-free mode.

Here are the steps I did -

• Preparation Step (only need to do once) do this when you're headphone are disconnected. Not sure if this one is needed but haven't yet tested without it.
  • Go to control panel
  • Click on Sound (make sure you're not in "View by: category" mode so the Sound icon appears)
  • Click on the Recording tab
  • Right click and disable each one of the recording devices except for your headphones.
• Day to Day use - we now want the headphones to start in hands-free mode and stick to it
  • Once again, open the Sound setting and click on the Recording tab
  • Connect your headphones
  • Now, the recording tab tries to use the mic on the headphone to display the sound level, so the headphones should be in hands-free mode. As long as you keep this window open, the headphones should remain in that mode.
  • You can now go into zoom/google meet/teams/any other video conference app you use

As I said, this worked for me for the past day... even made some zoom calls and people were actually able to hear me again :)

Let me know if this helped you!

I have the same exact issue with BOTH of my computers! It first happened in November 2021 when I upgraded my Dell XPS to Windows 11, I figured maybe it was an issue of Dell’s drivers not working correctly with Windows 11 and was hoping it would get sorted out after a couple months, however to this day it’s not fixed.

But then yesterday I purchased a brand new $1900 MSI Summit laptop with the top specs (Intel i7 12th Gen, 32 GB RAM) which came preloaded with Windows 11 Pro (fresh factory install, not upgraded from Win10). SAME EXACT PROBLEM!!

Video and audio will play just fine through my AirPod Pro’s or Bose portable if I’m playing on Netflix, YouTube or web browser. However if I try playing a media file such as MP4, AVI or WMV format, I can hear the audio at first, but the moment I fast forward or skip, the audio cuts out and proceeds to not work for any other source (ie. Netflix) until I restart the system or play directly over the system speakers (with the MSI). With my Dell XPS, all media functions including video will freeze until system restart.

I cannot believe after this much time Microsoft still hasn’t addressed and fixed this (obviously widespread) issue. I was disappointed when it happened with my Dell XPS, however my disappointment is on another level after spending $1900 on a brand new MSI laptop and having it continue to occur. Bluetooth audio is such an essential part in today’s world, not being able to use it during Zoom meetings or while watching something on the airplane is extremely limiting and infuriating. Mr Gates or Mr Nadella (MSFT’s current CEO), if you’re listening, please fix this!

I have the same problem. Device connected but sound work only hands-free mode. I can't set default audio output bluetooth heatphone. Because connection seems broken. I tried with different headphones and bluetooth adapters. It was working until a few weeks ago. I do not know why it happened.

![](https://learn-attachment.microsoft.com/api/attachments/7c9d5fb4-d0eb-4bb1-acd4-ad3cd89aa1fa?platform=QnA