OpenVPN Community Edition breaks Windows system sound

Nd4SpdSe

Hello! I'll post this here since it's not "OpenVPN Connect" unless this topic is supposed to go there.

Anyway, I have this very, very weird issue. OpenVPN GUI v "2.5.1-I601-amd64" breaks the sound on my friends laptop. No joke. It's an HP OMEN 15-EK0020CA laptop with RealTek audio.

The first time round I thought something happened. I remoted in to fix an unrelated software issue and I'm like, while I'm connected, I'll install the VPN on her system at the same time. I honestly thought something broke in the process by bad luck or by coincidence, or she just didn't notice. Tried updating, reinstalling the audio drivers, different versions, removing the device, no go. I had no more ideas and got her to call HP support. She called, couldn't fix it except only by doing a restore the system back before I touched it (wish I remembered the system restore) and it worked. Their restore broke the software fix I did so I went back in today to refix what I had fixed and see if it was going on, only to break it again. I restored it myself and did the process step-by-step to see where the problem happened. Doesn't help when you're doing multiple things at once.

I could install OpenVPN GUI but once I connected, it broke it and stayed broken even when I disconnected it. I didn't try deactivating the services and restarted, I just plainly uninstalled it and the sound came back. This of course does not happen on any of my other systems. I have no clue where to even begin on this....and just my luck, just when I find a working VPN solution for us, I can't.

Shneor

Facing the same on my laptop as well. Very strange!
My laptop is
Windows 10 Pro, ASUS FX506LU with RealTek audio.

TinCanTech

OpenVPN has to pass extremely rigorous tests before OpenVPN gets approval from Microsoft.

An overview can be found here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/install/whql-test-signature-program

So, this is far more likely to be a problem local to only your machine.