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[Hermann]

I have had some problems with a 266mhz compaq with onboard audio (posted a topic earlier).

At the end of the day, I thought I had the problem solved, but the next day something strange happend. Sometimes, music in most games, and some sound fxs wouldn't play. But only sometimes.

I was extremely confused that an OS as static as DOS would play such tricks on me. Eventually, I realised that the problem occur whenever I boot into XP, and then reboot to DOS.

Ofcourse it's not that big a problem, as I can just shut down the computer and then turn it back on... but still, it would be nice with a solution if any of you got one?

[Data]

you probably need to load a soundblaster driver at startup to dos.
something like sbinit.exe
this is because your card is probably pnp and windows changes some settings which makes in it incompatible with dos.

[Hermann]

I'm not going to load a driver when a "direct connection" (SET BLASTER) is enough. I'll keep as much conventional memory free as possible, thank you :P

You are very likely correct on the pnp windows thing. But the proper solution (as I see it), would then be to... uhm, "unmount" the card or reset to default settings, whenever I exit windows.

Another approach could be a program (not a driver), that resets sound card settings whenever dos is starting. That way, the "set blaster" setting should allow contact to the sound card. As far as I remember from my way old computer, SB16CFG.EXE did something like that (changes sound card settings, not dos settings for sending audio to the card). I'll try that program.

But please do reply if you've got any further suggestions.

[Rogue]

Having only 'set blaster' without proper driver is one of the reason you have problems with sound. Just like you said, it might work sometimes, and not in some other occations. sbinit would reset card, if I'm not mistaken.

And you can set it to load in UMB.

With CD-Rom, sound and mouse driver I still have more then 620KB of free mem.

[Hermann]

Ye, but the problem is I'll have to give up a few programs I've already loaded in ubm (as it is almos full already)... after all, it is windows causing troubles, not dos. the set blaster ought to be enough. sbinit or a simmilar approach just seems like a wrong approach when it's not really needed.

But I'll try

[Rogue]

Some programs are alreeady in UMB?

Can you post your autoexec.bat and config.sys?

[Hermann]

Nah, it doesn't matter. I'll just set up a new menu in config.sys for a gamemode only setup. Then I won't need most of the programs currently loaded in umb. Furthermore, it might be better to be able to use an english keyboard layout in gamemode...

But what I'd like to know now, is exactly WHY my computer is acting like that?

[Rogue]

Running WinXP on that box is very wierd.

IMHO you should run Win98 and use DOS Mode for old games.

[Hermann]

I don't use winxp for playing games. I use winxp simply because it's a lot easier to use USB disks and burn cd-r's.

That's why I dualboot XP and dos

[Rogue]

If you use Win98, then you can play a lot of windows games, plus you can create shortcuts for DOS Mode, with different settings. That is what I use to play, and I did not have any problem to run any games untill now.