Windows 11 Bluetooth no sound/microphone and crashing

Anonymous
2022-01-09T03:35:21+00:00

My Bluetooth earphones have been working well all the time until I upgraded my laptop to Windows 11. The laptop shows my earphones are connected, but neither sound nor microphone works. The browser and Zoom crash every time I try to use Bluetooth earphones to listen to music or join meetings.

I have tried disconnecting/reconnecting Bluetooth earphones, turning on/off Bluetooth, resetting my earphones, restarting my laptop, and none of these resolves the issues of no sound/mic and crashing. I even bought a new pair of Bluetooth earphones, and it did not work either.

I think this is a bug in Windows 11. Am I the only one facing this issue? What exactly is going on with Windows 11 Bluetooth? And what else can I do now?

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Performance and system failures

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  1. Anonymous
    2022-06-15T14:09:20+00:00

    This is just ridiculous... Can't believe how such a basic thing is broken so badly... and especially now that so many of us are working remotely and are dependent on our headphones for video conference calls...

    I have two pairs of different bluetooth headsets, a QCY T5 and a Sony wf-1000xm3 and I can't get sound in either one of them!

    Disabling hands-free mode brings the sound back but then I can't use the mic which I need for zoom calls!

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-06-15T21:15:20+00:00

    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!

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-06-22T13:43:00+00:00

    I am having the same issue with a new laptop and factory installed windows 11. the hands free works but with poor audio quality for listening to music. I also have had teams crash while using Bluetooth hands free. I had no issues with windows 10. This is incredibly annoying. Microsoft, please fix this as soon as possible.

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-06-23T19:25:11+00:00

    +1 for 95% of comments here: any Bluetooth audio device isn't working properly with Windows 11. No issues on Windows 10 with the same set of devices & drivers. One year after OS release: still in beta with no working audio xDDD

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  5. Anonymous
    2022-07-08T05:04:14+00:00

    Same issues on surface laptop 3. Windows 11 and Bose qc35ii, connected but no sound and crashes. Worked with no issues on the same device running Windows 10... Please fix this!!

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