Ok...let's try to make this explanation as comprehensive as possible...


As you may or may not know, my pc is a crappy compaq i won with some contest once. A coca-cola contest even. Anyhoo...the damn thing crashed all over the place and stuff, resulting in many formats and such. They delivered them compaq restore cd's with it that would install windows and all sorts of other stuff at once, drivers, compa stuff, mcafee scanner, word, etc.


I mostly used those to reinstall every time cos of simplicity reasons. BUT, after a while, they refused to work and i grabbed for a regular windows 98
cd after my format. Everything fine, got graphics drivers to work, etc. etc. , and even very few crashes anymore.


But the sound drivers...windows did not find any drivers of itself for my sound card, so i let it be for that time being.

THEN, when i finally decided to install the drivers, stuf went wrong. First i downloaded them off Compaq site? I restarted, got the windows-entry-sound thing. BUT, when i try to run an application involving sound, like a song, videoclip, or a game, the computer freezes. Very strange if you know that for example the autorun of BG does play the BG music withput problem but, as i said, the minute i start it it freezes.

So, i deinstall, and downlaod the drivers straight from the manufacturer. (ESS technologies) Same thing, windows sounds, etc., except for running applications which make it crash. I haven't got the slightest clue what this could be, being a total pc moron.

I find it VERY strange that the drivers install apparently like they should be without "missing files" or wahtever, and that i DO have sound but the entire thing locks up as soon as i run an application. Any help will be greatly rewarded with a nude pic of me. Go on, call those helpdesks, you know you want to.

no nude pics!

Sounds to me like you've got a motherboard driver problem. You said it's an ESS sound card...since I don't remember ever hearing of those, my guess would be it's onboard (ie, built as part of the motherboard and not a separate card). That being the case, perhaps you don't have the motherboard drivers for Windows installed.

The easiest thing to do, in my opinion, would be to install a newer version of Windows (a clean installation). Like, WinXP would be best. The drivers it has by default would probably install every peice of hardware you have. That's the easiest way.

A more difficult way requires some research. What's the model number on that Compaq? Using that, we could probably find out what motherboard it's using, and then find out the chipset (for chipset drivers) and any onboard peripherals (such as that sound card) that you may need drivers for.

Unfortuanetly, what you're describing isn't an easy fix. If I were taking a call as tech support regarding this, I'd probably just recommend fdisk, format, reinstall Windows again.

Mmm..;there you're saying something...the windows that came with the Compaq cd's was 98 SE, and this is ordinary 98. Could that explain a lot? Cos i idd never had it with the compaq-version things.


i'll have a check for the compaq pc nr. thing on the ent. I know it's a Compaq Presario desktop 7462. DOn't know if i can find decent info on that myself tho, we'll see.

http://support.tandy.com/support_computer/58010.htm

there's some info on your system.

http://www29.compaq.com/falco/doc_resul ... Os=8#Setup and Maintenance Information

there's a bunch of info and drivers/documentation there for your computer.

I dunno, man. If the computer hard locks on some apps, when you play sound, but plays sound on its own without problems, there's something seriously wrong with that machine. Dunno if it's Windows (probably) or a hardware issue. Probably Windows being stupid. Maybe you got a bad installation. Did you format the drive? Did you fdisk it? I'd honestly suggest fdisk, format, and then install a newer O/S...at least Win2000 if you have it available. Preferably XP. If all you have is 98...

Tnx for the info& links so far already.


Yeah i've formatted adn fdisk'd and reinstalled twice before now, so that's not the problem. I'll have a copy of win 2k by friday so i'll try that one too then.


Crap pc. Yeah it is seriously fucked up. But i always manage to keep them functional to some degree, but stuff like this happens all the time. That and registry errors, word documents magically clearing itself and whatnot. I work on word 97 btw.

Ok, got windows 2000 now. WIll prolly install it tonite, i'll let you know how it goes.

good luck. don't forget to get service pack 2. Makes 2000 considerably better.

Service pack 2, gotcha.

W00t, sound back!

I removed the partitions on my first disk, made a new primary one on it, then formatted. Installed win 2000, and went for driverhunt. After a while i found some for my screen and sound. And then, finally, i didn't get the "no audiostream, no sound hardware" NOR did the whole thing crash my pc. But still, i didn't hear a thing. And i'm like "wtf?!", and check if mebbe my sound settings are like way down, but nope. So i figured out that there must have been a wrongly connected sound wire somewhere, and checked for it, and tadaa, some ass had put the thing in a wrong slot.

I mean how hard is it? there are three slots; green, blue and pink, and they manage to put the green one in the BLUE slot ffs. It's this kinda stupidity you're not counting on that you easily overlook aye.


Anyways, tnx for all assistance given by all of you..well actually just Satis but still :p Nude pic coming up...ah crap just saw you requested none, well ur loss

Ok....i'm back with more annoying questions.


So, as you have read by now i have win2k installed now. Everything seemed very ok, until something happened; i.e. my BG crashed! Everytime i played it i got a BSoD after a while, saying "kmode_excption_not_handled". So, i spent loads of time searching on it on the net (apparently it's very common) and in the end didn't find a better solution than installing win2k service pack 3.

After that, the BSoD's of that kind never appeared again. However, what DID happen was that after playing BG for a while i got kicked back to desktop for no reason. This also happened when the BSoD-isues were still there but then i figured it was just part of that error, which it apparently is not.


(to make it even more fun to try to understand: 8) )
What i did just now is format, and install win98 and win2k next to that, so running 2 OS. The BG install is still there (it's on my second HD which wasn't formatted cos there ain't no OS on there anyhoo), but obviously not in the registry anymore, not that matters but blah. So...i figured the "crash-to-desktop" thing to be a win2k thing, and tried to play BG while running win98...and bam, back to desktop. Now my question on that is: is this, you think, cos of a)the BG install is corrupt itself, b)cos it was installed under win2k initially (so it also crashes under win98)?




I must add to this all: before, on a clean win98 install (without sound, like it is now on win98), BG never crashed like that. And i also did a reinstall of it but it kept happening.


If there's anything that gets me mad it's BG crashing...it's like taking a junk's shots away.

Ok....i seem to have solved the win 98 sound problems, but don't really know how.

I opened my case today and checked for my motherboard's name/producer/number, which turned out to be some shady chinese company named "Camaro". Damn compaq and their cheap prefab parts. Anyways, i went looking for drivers for my motherboard like Satis told me; and din't find much, but i did stumble upon a bios update for win98 for among others my compaq model. (mebbe bios update=motherboard drivers, dunno ) So i decided to install that. It did some stuff, but it also gave me an error saying that a file was missing and stopped.

So i figured that didn't do much. So i just went for a desperate try again, installed 3 sets of drivers over eachother. ESS 1988 WDM Plug and play PCI audiodrive, ESS 1988 PCI Audiodrive (those are both win 98SE and higher drivers) AND the win 98 (non-SE) VX-drivers. And kabang! Sound, that works while playing music and games like BG, instead of crashing.


I don't have the slighest clue why it does work now. I have tried tons of drivers sets, among which those 3, individually, but they either didn't work or crashed my pc. So, i conclude i have some VERY freaky hybrid between win 98 and win 98SE-type of thing here. If anyone else has a more suitable explanation plz give it then. Not that i REALLY care what's goin' on, as long as it works.

Anyways, tnx for every help i got.