Earbuds aren't working correctly in Windows 11

I have 2 laptops--my 5 yr. old HP with Windows 10, and my new Lenovo ThinkPad with Windows 11.

When music is playing on the HP and I plug in Sony wired earbuds, the music comes out of them and not the computer speaker, which of course is how it's supposed to work.

But, when I do the same thing on the Lenovo, music continues to come out of the computer; nothing from the earbuds.

After spending 4 hours in a chat with Microsoft and 2+ hours with Lenovo--each tech took control of my computer to try to fix it--it's pretty much been determined that the problem must be with iTunes, since the earbuds and computer speaker work as they should when listening to YouTube and other websites with sound.

I've followed advice I've seen online to change the "play audio using" from Windows Audio Session to Direct Sound. It worked twice, but when I tried a third time to make sure it was actually a fix, it didn't work and when I removed my earbuds from the computer, the "Play" arrow on the playlist was now a "pause" and I couldn't play any of the songs. Once I changed the setting back to what it had been and restarted my laptop, the play arrow was back on the playlist and songs would play from the computer speakers, but not the earbuds. If I plug in the earbuds and restart the laptop, they'll work, but again, when I remove them, I can't play any songs.

I've talked with Apple Support; the customer service rep is kicking it up a level to an engineer and is supposed to call me back tomorrow. Hopefully, they'll know how to fix it. I doesn't seem as if I should need to restart my computer every time I want to use earbuds! I can't figure out if this is a common problem with iTunes on Windows 11...which is why I'm hesitant to get rid of Windows 10 on my HP even though support is ending in October.