Dave-H

Your last link seems to just redirect to https://www.realtek.cz/ which appears to only show ALCxxx HD Audio codecs, with of course no Windows 98 drivers available.

If you'd used the option to go back and install a different driver, that would have probably allowed you to over-ride that. However, as we now know that no version later that 4.04 is actually 98 compatible, there would have been no point. Obvious progress with the 3.52 driver though, which is good! Do you have the Sound Manager applet in your Control Panel now? Does Device Manager now say that the device is working properly?

Thanks @LoneCrusader, that's interesting about versions above 4.04 being incompatible with Windows 98. As I said earlier I always used version 4.00, and I do have that installation file labelled as being the last one that works OK on 98. I'll try and get a copy of 4.04 now I know that should be OK too, in case I have to revert to one of my spare motherboards which is an AC97 one.

If that doesn't work, try downloading and unpacking the archive from here, (make sure you select "Download the Driver File only"). Don't run the setup file, but instead select "update driver" from Device Manager and browse to the INF file in the extracted WDM folder and see if it will successfully install that way. It may be that the setup routine is not working properly on your system, and I have known things install successfully using this alternative method when this has happened in the past.

IIRC "Code 10" is an absolutely useless generic general failure message which doesn't tell you anything specific about what the problem actually is! FWIW, the last Realtek AC97 driver I used (for many years) on Windows 98SE was version 4.00. I only had to stop using it when I changed the motherboard for an updated version and one of the manufacturer's changes was to put HD Audio hardware on the board instead of AC97 hardware.

Does Device Manager say what's wrong? "Cannot start code 10" for instance?

The hardware ID you quoted in an earlier post, VEN_1106&DEV_3059&SUBSYS_02701462&REV_60, seems to definitely be an AC97 codec. They claim here to have a Windows 98 compatible driver (don't download their no doubt spyware "driver update utility", use the link below it.) Then click the "WDM_A406.rar" link on the next page, then make sure you select "Download the Driver File only" on the next page. That should work, there are plenty of Windows 98 drivers for AC97 audio.

Ah yes, sorry I'd forgotten that!

I'm using Malwarebytes Premium 3.5.1 and it's still automatically updating itself absolutely fine.

I checked the system.ini file, and was surprised to find that it already said "Waveaudio=mciwave.drv 9" (probably where I left it after playing with the UI), although the UI still said 4! It appears that the UI slider was changing the setting, but just not showing it. I set it to 5 in the system.ini file, and when I went back to the UI, it now said 5. I must say that the system sounds now sound better, thanks very much!

Yes indeed. I don't have the Access component installed, which may be why I haven't been offered that update.

I found the wave buffer setting option, and it is set to 4. Unfortunately I didn't seem to be able to set it to anything else. If I change the setting, it doesn't "stick", and always reverts back to 4 again. Where is it stored, is it in the registry or in one of the ini files? Perhaps I could try changing it there? I am using Realtek drivers on Windows XP and Windows 10. R2.74 and 6.0.1.7647 (x64) respectively.

My wav music files are CD quality, they play fine. I've done a few more tests, and the system sounds when played with media players are exactly the same, that is to say distorted, when played with Windows Media Player or VLC Media Player. Strangely though, when played with the QuickTime 6 player, they sound fine! I guess that somehow plays them differently. With regard to the pops and clicks, that's interesting that the "proper" drivers mute the sound while the file is loading. I didn't know that, but it makes perfect sense if the 3.1 driver doesn't. I've noticed that even with the "proper" drivers on Windows XP and Windows 10, the speakers pop quite loudly a couple of times when the drivers are loading on boot. Not very elegant. Never had that with the good old AC97!

Thanks for the clarification @deomsh. I've done some more testing just to see if the 3.1 driver would be adequate for @tillewolle, and playing music through the driver seems to sound absolutely fine, but the system sounds sound a bit rough, some sort of HF distortion. This doesn't change with the volume setting. I did wonder if it was because they are wav files, not mp3, but I have some music wav files, and they sound fine when played too. The only other issue is that there are low level clicks and pops from the speakers while a file is loading, but once it's loaded and playing, that's fine.

Yes that is a great tool, I've had it for quite a while. It doesn't seem to have been updated for quite a while, 20.12.2016 still seems to be the latest version, but I guess that doesn't matter.

Strange, KB2986256 was apparently issued on November 27th, but as you say @JerrMSFNI can find no notification of it and it doesn't appear after a scan on Microsoft Update. Is it perhaps not necessary on all systems?

Yes, it does need configuring for each chip, which is why it's a shame that @tillewolledoesn't also have an ALC883, if he had he could just use my files! @deomshsorted all that out for me. I really only needed it to be able to get the system sounds working, as i have other operating systems on the machine if I want to listen to music or anything else serious. There is some distortion on the system sounds, but surprisingly music is pretty OK if I do play something on Windows 98.

Only just seen this. I got a driver to work on Windows 98SE for a Realtek HD Audio chipset with the invaluable help of @deomsh and others. It was an ALC883, not ALC880, but you might be lucky! See this rather large thread.

I'm not sure that the OP's problem is the same as that one which I originally reported though. I wasn't seeing the Instagram videos at all, although still images were fine. It turned out that the videos' containers were collapsed to a single line. The OP seems to be saying that the containers are visible, but are just filled with black, which sounded more like not having html5/h264 video support in the browser. In that case Facebook and YouTube videos shouldn't work either as I believe that the Flash fallback has now been removed.

I assume you mean Firefox 52.9 ESR. Do YouTube and Facebook videos work, or is the problem just with Instagram? If not, see here.

Er, OK...........

You'll find that the use of ProxHTTPSProxy has been well documented already in this thread, and others!

I'd be interested to know if it works! I did look for Java offline installers which still worked on XP when the official ones from Oracle stopped working, but never found one. It is only the installer which doesn't work, the actual Java components still work fine on XP. You may well find that when you run the installer, nothing actually happens. If it does work, please let us know! EDIT: I've just actually downloaded that installer, and it is the standard offline installer from Oracle, which I can almost 100% say will not install on XP, whatever Codec Pack say!

Thanks Den! I guess I'll wait a bit longer. As you say, XP runs fine with only 3GB or so of RAM usable, and unless you want to run resource intensive games on it or whatever, there is probably no real reason to need be able to access more memory anyway.

Just a quick aside. IIRC there was some problem with running 16 bit programs in some boot configurations of XP. Will they still run if a PAE patch is applied? Asking for a friend. (No not really, I do actually have a couple of 16 bit programs that I use! )