For those who don’t know, I got a MacBook Pro as part of my education with Full Sail University, and the computer is pretty sweet. I have little complaints about Mac OS X, and the fact that it can run Windows so I can play my PC games, makes it the ideal computer for me right now (and the most powerful computer I have ever owned). However, there is this small problem with my Windows install that made it unbearable to use in places that I wanted to keep quiet. When plugging my headphones into the headphone jack, sound would still come out of my speakers on the MacBook Pro. I couldn’t figure it out, until today, when I decided to get it to work. Thankfully, the fix doesn’t require any software downloads or crazy settings, and everything works after you unplug the headphones too. (Note: I did this in Windows Vista with Boot Camp 3.1. This should work in Windows 7, however, I can’t test that out because I don’t own a license)

What you need to do is open the Sound Settings in the Control Panel in Windows.

Vista Sound Settings

If you notice, my headphones aren’t plugged in, and because of that, I can’t do much of anything. So, once I plug in my headphones, then more options open up.

Vista Sound Settings with Headphones Plugged in

With these settings, my speakers are still the active sound output, and it doesn’t use my headphones. Next thing you need to do is to select the Headphones and hit the Set Default button. This will make the headphones your primary sound device. Once your headphones are disconnected, then your speakers become the default, kinda like a fallback device.

Issues with this:

Coming from the Mac OS X side of things, you can disconnect the headphones and the speakers become the default without having to change settings. This is a wonderful thing because it routes everything without having to deal with settings. The Windows side is a little different. It seems like the driver that is in use with the MacBook Pro doesn’t route properly, and because of that, sounds have a tendency to not work once you disconnect the headphones. For example, when I was watching a video in Windows Media Player, and I disconnected the headphones, the video would not respond and the audio wouldn’t route to the speakers. This shows that the driver still has major issues that Apple needs to rectify.

If you know of anything else that is a problem, let me know in the comments.