Having trouble with sound from my audio card (Audigy 2 ZS)

[kmccmk9]

Hello,

So I finally got my Audigy 2 ZS installed under Windows 98 SE by installing VxD drivers manually. I'm using a Asus p5pe-vm motherboard. All of the system sounds come through just fine, CD Audio works fine as well. However, when trying to launch most games I do not get any audio. Most games don't produce an error just silence. However, any of the Humongous Entertainment games do produce this interesting error that prevents the game from running:

"during the dma buffer size search the sound card wouldn't prepare our sound headers"

I honestly have no idea what to do with that and Google hasn't turned up much. I tried disabling hardware acceleration on my sound card and I've also tried enabling DMA on my CD-Drive.

Everything is set to use the Emu10Kx Mixer [E400] which I'm assuming is the Audigy card.

Running DXDIAG sound test I get the following report:

DirectSound [Emu10Kx Wave Out [E400]]
Device ID: PCI\VEN_1102DEV_0004SUBSYS_20021102RE\
Manufacturer ID: 2
Product ID: 104
Type: VXD
Default Device: Yes

CTAUD9X.VXD
4.12.0001.0381
9/23/03
ctaud9x.vxd
Creative Technology, Ltd.


DirectX is set to full acceleration

DirectSound test failed at Step 10 (Secondary buffer): HRESULT = 0x8007000e (Out of memory)

I tried uninstalling the hardware and software for my Audigy 2 ZS and reinstall using the CD available on vogonsdrivers. BIG MISTAKE. Nothing at all worked anymore. So I removed the hardware and software and tried installing the drivers for my motherboard built-in sound. Similar to the other result I can hear the Windows startup chime (although it sounds terrible) and I can hear some sounds from some games (although terrible). Ironically Humongous Entertainment games still throw the same error. I ran DXDIAG sound test again and noticed it failed at Step 17 (out of memory).

 

I'm running out of ideas unfortunately, maybe someone has come across something similar and may have some suggestions.

 

Thank you for any help.

 

Regards

Edited February 21, 2019 by kmccmk9

[pangoomis]

Have you tried different PCI slots on your motherboard?

What are the rest of the system specs? (CPU, GPU, RAM)

 

Edited February 21, 2019 by MrMateczko

[kmccmk9]

3 hours ago, MrMateczko said:

Have you tried different PCI slots on your motherboard?

What are the rest of the system specs? (CPU, GPU, RAM)

 

Hi I have not tried the other slots (I can do this tomorrow),

CPU: Intel Pentium 5 3.00 GHz

GPU: ATI Radeon 9800XT

RAM: 1024MB

I'm also having a lot of difficulty testing this further. Even though I've uninstalled all Creative software and I have removed the devices from Device Manager, every reboot they automatically install. Therefore, I'm unable to install the VxD drivers I have. What's even more interesting, I can't find the driver files it constantly is installing, they simply don't exist.

Edited February 22, 2019 by kmccmk9

[Goodmaneuver]

Have you tried right clicking the name tab in the system iosubsys folder selecting more then ticking created. Remove the most recent drivers that you think are associated with Audigy and do the same thing in windows inf and subfolders removing infs. Check _Restore (hidden attributed) temp folder for the recently replaced files and make sure installation is not installing from the windows temp folder. Check with msconfig to see what is starting up, registry may be told to start a mixer for example and perhaps a scanreg /restore may be appropriate. Take a copy of bootlog.txt and boot up with bootlogging and check/compare what is happening.

Did you use the dos drivers for Audigy 1 then the patch for 2?

http://www.mbudde.de/mp3player/files/emu10dos.zip

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/mpxplay/AUDIGY12.ZIP?download

(A very good AGP board but my AGP port died. Pushed out 75 fps on Western Railway with X850, E6700.)

 

Edited February 22, 2019 by Goodmaneuver

[kmccmk9]

On 2/21/2019 at 6:29 PM, MrMateczko said:

Have you tried different PCI slots on your motherboard?

What are the rest of the system specs? (CPU, GPU, RAM)

 

 

16 hours ago, Goodmaneuver said:

Have you tried right clicking the name tab in the system iosubsys folder selecting more then ticking created. Remove the most recent drivers that you think are associated with Audigy and do the same thing in windows inf and subfolders removing infs. Check _Restore (hidden attributed) temp folder for the recently replaced files and make sure installation is not installing from the windows temp folder. Check with msconfig to see what is starting up, registry may be told to start a mixer for example and perhaps a scanreg /restore may be appropriate. Take a copy of bootlog.txt and boot up with bootlogging and check/compare what is happening.

Did you use the dos drivers for Audigy 1 then the patch for 2?

http://www.mbudde.de/mp3player/files/emu10dos.zip

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/mpxplay/AUDIGY12.ZIP?download

(A very good AGP board but my AGP port died. Pushed out 75 fps on Western Railway with X850, E6700.)

 

Ok, the scanreg restore somehow got me back to my original state. Windows Startup sound works fine but game audio, does not play. DXDIAG sound test reports Failure at step 10 (Secondary buffer): HRESULT = 0x8007000e (Out of Memory). Also, I have tried all available other slots and the result is the same.

[Goodmaneuver]

Some games may use midi wave table output. In the sound and multimedia control panel you could select Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth for a trial, it is the one I use. Are you using Audigy2 or ac97 now as vogonsdrivers suggest the drivers I gave in last post for win98. Is there other games that I could try other than Humongous Entertainment that I could check that do not work? In device manager for your sound device there is usually a setting for the amount of memory used for the synthesizer. Sometimes installations over write files in the system that are not compatible with 98, could check in _Restore\temp folder hidden in the root directory for clues and check the most recent created files in windows and system.


 

Edited February 23, 2019 by Goodmaneuver
typo

[jumper]

> RAM: 1024MB
Out-of-memory errors with this much ram is a classic problem. Between system ram and graphics ram, you have too much! The solution is usually to reduce the amount of ram. Can someone please add details or links to the instructions how? (TIA)

[pangoomis]

This all seems logical, I had some problems with 3DMark 2001SE with 1GB of RAM, even if the rest of the system worked fine, that disappeared when limiting the amount to 512MB.

I myself stand that having the amount of RAM between 512MB and 1024MB may still cause unexpected problems, like me or OP had, even if the system boots up correctly.

I never had ANY problems with using 512MB of RAM or below.

Put:

MaxPhysPage=20000

in the [386enh] section in the system.ini file inside the Windows directory.

This will limit the amount of RAM to 512MB. If you still encounter issues, try

MaxPhysPage=10000

This will limit the amount of RAM to 256MB, although I don't think that would be necessary.

[rloew]

768MB is roughly the limit without modifications. My Patch allows unlimited System RAM.

Graphics RAM can be an issue if it is 512MB or more.

[kmccmk9]

4 hours ago, MrMateczko said:

This all seems logical, I had some problems with 3DMark 2001SE with 1GB of RAM, even if the rest of the system worked fine, that disappeared when limiting the amount to 512MB.

I myself stand that having the amount of RAM between 512MB and 1024MB may still cause unexpected problems, like me or OP had, even if the system boots up correctly.

I never had ANY problems with using 512MB of RAM or below.

Put:

MaxPhysPage=20000

in the [386enh] section in the system.ini file inside the Windows directory.

This will limit the amount of RAM to 512MB. If you still encounter issues, try

MaxPhysPage=10000

This will limit the amount of RAM to 256MB, although I don't think that would be necessary.

Wow, I'm so happy right now. Who knew such a simple tweak fixed all these errors. Looking back it makes sense, although from a programming background (out of memory) typically means there isn't enough. Not the other way around. Everything is working now. Thank you all so much

[loblo]

I satisfactorily used an Audigy 2 ZS for a little while a few years back on my ME system and I used the WDM drivers not the VxD. It stopped working properly when I increased system RAM however, this is a known issue with this card and not only for 9x systems if I am not mistaken. Unfortunately I can't remember the amount of RAM at which this starts but that's two things you can try, use WDM driver and reduce RAM amount.

Edited February 27, 2019 by loblo

[kmccmk9]

On 2/26/2019 at 7:04 PM, loblo said:

I satisfactorily used an Audigy 2 ZS for a little while a few years back on my ME system and I used the WDM drivers not the VxD. It stopped working properly when I increased system RAM however, this is a known issue with this card and not only for 9x systems if I am not mistaken. Unfortunately I can't remember the amount of RAM at which this starts but that's two things you can try, use WDM driver and reduce RAM amount. 

Thanks for the ideas, if I get courageous I'll keep messing with it a bit. But, Audigy 2 ZS doesn't have proper WDM drivers for 98SE it looks like so that may only work for higher Windows versions though.

[loblo]

I used WDM drivers for Win 2000, they worked fine on Win ME but had to install them "manually", eg unpack them and then direct the hardware wizard to that folder. I can't remember the driver version unfortunately .