Sound Card Locks Computer

Dear Friend:

I think that you haven't any problem with those card, however it would be interesting to install these components on another machine ( Of course with the same OS and hadware configuration).
In the other hand, I believe it's a software problem. In this point we have two cases:
1. Operating System Problem ( Installing, Configuration and/or HW Requirements).
2. Mutual incompatibility ( Device driver).
Please, check the HP Homepage for similar cases.
Good luck,

Dear Milton,

Yeah, I think so too. Install went well and the
driver called for on the Creative web site is the
one included with Windows. There is no BIOS
upgrade available from HP. Anyhow, the card
was made about the same time as the
computer, back in the dark ages, they kinda go
together! What is more standard than a Sound
Blaster sound card? That's why I got it. Thanks
for the input!

Reid

You probaply have a conflicting IRQ or Port that you are unaware of. As I recall the cards you are talking about are not fully "Plug and Pray" and require either a Jumper to be set or a configuration program to be run on the card in order to configure the IRQ and PORT for the hardware. Then you need to manually configure the software settings in device manager to match the hardware.

Dear Chris910,

Yes, that was my first thought too -- card was reported as assigned IRQ5 DMA1 DMA5 & I/O 0220-022F, 0330-0331, 0388-038B -- none of which are reported as being in use anywhere else by my own visual inspection using Aida32. Windows reports no conflicts. I have the card out now and see no jumpers/DIP settings on it. Creative site mentions no configuration software although the card is about 9 years old and maybe they discontinued it. If anyone knows of a source for such software, if it is required, please let me know!

Thanks, Reid

What is showing up in the "Device Manager"?
Do you have any yellow exclamation points or red X's? Does your PCI steering bridge show up. Win98 doesn't usually have drivers for your chipset, for example "Intel 82801 EB PCI Bridge", "Via PCI Controller" etc or something similar, they have to come from the motherboard manufacturer. without a working PCI device you will have problems installing PCI cards.

Try this but change the sound scheme in your os. It could be a bad sound file.

Not that its part of the problem but I'm curious about the 160 MB memory configuration. What is there a 128MB and 32MB installed? Since your having problems remove the 32MB stick if that's the case. The 2 of them may not match in many ways.

Boot to safe mode. Go to Device Manager and delete all the sound cards and codecs that show up.
Check the Config.sys and Autoexec.bat files to make sure there's no TSR programs for sound being loaded from the old card.
Since this is an ISA card you can check to see if the BIOS will allow for setting IRQ 5 to Legacy/ISA. This may correct the problem.

Check the System.ini

Under the [boot] section there should be lines lines that say:

drivers=mmsystem.dll
mmsound.drv=sound.drv

Under the [386enh] section look for any line that starts with device= and ends with .386. If there is such a line type a semicolon in front of it.

device=vsbpd.386 to
;device= vsbpd.386< /li>< /li>

Under the [drivers] section you should see wave=mmsystem.dll
midi= mmsystem.dll.
If these lines are not there then add them to this section. If you see any other lines that say wave= or midi= then place a semicolon in front of that line as described for the [386enh] section.

Under the [mci] section you should see the following lines:

cdaudio=mcicda.drv
sequencer=mciseq.drv
waveaudio=mciwave.drv
If any of the lines are missing, then add them to this section. If any of these lines look in anyway different then change them to this format. Look for any lines that contain mcimix or mcixing. If there are any lines containing either file then place a semicolon in front of the line as described for the [386enh] section.

pierrejamme, esimelaro & RCOM: wow, I think we are homing in on it -- is seemed like a resource conflict to me too, the way it acted. It is not an IRQ, it selected IRQ5 which was open. The DMA, 00 & 01, was OK too. I had already deleted all the sound card stuff in device manager as I notice RCOM recommended, before I reinstalled the card and let it try to configure itself, which it did as described above. I will try RCOM's other recommendations and let you know, thanks! BUT I also noticed something funny in Device Manager when I went digging around in the System Devices category: "IO read data port for ISA Plug and Play enumerator" had no exclamation marks or anything but when I go into it I see no resources assigned. Click on the button to set configuration manually and you get the page that has the box to check to automatically assign resources and the listed resources are: 0274-0277, 0374-0377, 0338-033B, 0238-023B. Next to 0374-0377 is a no-go sign and the comment below is "0374-0377 used by secondary IDE controller (dual fifo) 0374-0377 used by Intel 82371SB PCI bus master IDE controller". After checking all over I think this is not the case, that resource is not used by anything I can find. But anyway, when you go to change it manually to something else it gives a warning which I ignored, but for some reason the manual change did not take and in fact it won't set the resources automatically either. After reboot you go back and find there are no resources assigned, same as before. Since this is an ISA card giving the trouble I wondered whether this was the problem? But I can't seem to fix it. Is the inability to change or assign resources related to the fact that at the moment there are no ISA cards in the system? -- I have the sound card out because when it is in I can't do anything for all the crashes. Thanks, Reid

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