Steps to reproduce:

Try starting NVDA on a VM in AppVeyor CI.

Actual behavior:

NVDA fails to star with the following in the log:

CRITICAL - __main__ (06:22:13.355) - MainThread (7092):
core failure
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "nvda.pyw", line 415, in <module>
  File "core.pyc", line 684, in main
  File "audio\soundSplit.pyc", line 81, in initialize
  File "pycaw\utils.pyc", line 197, in GetAudioSessionManager
  File "pycaw\utils.pyc", line 177, in GetSpeakers
_ctypes.COMError: (-2147023728, 'Element not found.', (None, None, None, 0, None))

Expected behavior:

NVDA should start

NVDA logs, crash dumps and other attachments:

System configuration

NVDA installed/portable/running from source:

N/A

NVDA version:

All after merge of PR #16071

Windows version:

N/A

Name and version of other software in use when reproducing the issue:

None

Other information about your system:

Other questions

Does the issue still occur after restarting your computer?

Yes

Have you tried any other versions of NVDA? If so, please report their behaviors.

Versions before #16071 don't have this problem

If NVDA add-ons are disabled, is your problem still occurring?

Yes

Does the issue still occur after you run the COM Registration Fixing Tool in NVDA's tools menu?

N/A

Additional context:

This currently prevents new Alpha builds from being created.
cc @mltony as this is caused by your PR.
Also @seanbudd for awareness as it looks like @mltony 's work was merged despite failing CI. Our release process explicitly mentions that only PR's where CI was successful can be merged, and it would be good to follow this standard practice. The fact that our system tests used to fail intermittently should cause them to be improved, rather than failures to be ignored.