Windows API PlaySound error / silence

Posted byMaris

Today stumbled at strange behavior of Windows API function PlaySound in combination with SND_FILENAME flag.

There are two scenarios:

  1. No sound is played, and PlaySound returns success (TRUE) in combination with SND_ASYNC;
  2. No sound is played, and PlaySound returns failure (FALSE) when using the same wav file, but without asynchronous flag.

The cause is, that system where this is happening is Windows Server 2008 R2, which is apparently missing some WAV codec. Files coded with different codec works.