Hi all! I have a Dell Optiplex GX260 with me. Clean installed Win98 SE on it, then installed the sound driver (Analog Devices ADI 198x Integrated Audio, v.5.12.01.3508, A03). With no video driver installed, audio works perfectly in all respects. But as soon as I installed the video driver (Intel 845 G/GL Integrated Video, v. 4.13.01.3084, A00), the sound started showing these behaviors:

• Important: Startup sound no longer plays
• The navigation sounds in the explorer ("tick" sounds when double clicking folders), the error sounds and all play just fine
• .wav files play fine (in mplayer2) when I double click on them in the file explorer
• Important: When I go to Control Panel ->  Sounds, and I try to preview the various sounds, the sounds play alright if they're really short (like "Start Navigation" or "Empty Recycle Bin" events). But for longer sounds ("Default Sound" or "Chord" or "Start Windows" events) I get the Error: "Windows cannot play the (path).wav file. The file may be damaged or may use an unrecognized compression format." Or sometimes I get the error: "Windows cannot play the (path).wav file. It may be damaged or may not be a valid sound file"

Some more info which may or may not be relevant

• The computer has 1 Gb RAM (in My Computer properties it shows 1022 Mb RAM)
• In dxdiag it shows that the sound card of your system doesn't support hardware accelerated sound

Can anyone please help me to get the sound back to normal behavior, like it is in a normal, properly functioning Win98 installation? Thanks!

Edited July 8, 20233 yr by sk9392

Are you sure it' not GX260? Otherwise maybe this link can be helpful: https://www.dell.com/community/Desktops-General-Read-Only/Windows-98SE-on-an-Optiplex-GX260/td-p/3977581

@deomsh: Ah sorry I mistyped! I've changed the title and post to correct the typo. Regarding the link you posted, I checked it out and downloaded "Audio: QFE Update [269601USA8.EXE]". I ran that on the optiplex but see no change - the audio issues are still there

Edited July 8, 20233 yr by sk9392

Update: I managed to reproduce this buggy audio behavior in a different setting: I re-installed Win98 and only the sound driver. The sound was working perfectly. But after that I modified the MaxPhysPage setting in system.ini to 20000. After restarting, I saw the same kind of buggy audio behavior as I detailed in the first post. Maybe that'll give some insight?

Sorry, says nothing to me.

In the Dell post a special other QFE was mentioned, but I can't found it (also no link in the post).

If you are reinstalling already: in my experience with Windows 98SE installations first install with USB and Audio DISABLED in BIOS (if an option). So video first. Second install some USB2 driver and afterwards enable USB and see if everything is working. Then install the audio patch and last enable audio and install driver (AC'97 driver will need access to audio).

Because of your shared memory with video: if adjustment is possible in BIOS first, say 32 or 64MB.

Setting MaxPhysPage=20000 sounds okay.

Maybe in:

[vcache]

MinFileCache=1024

MaxFileCache=8092

But I doubt vcache will make any difference.

And did you install the INTEL inf FIRST, mentioned in the Dell post?

@deomsh: Thanks for the info! So what worked for me was setting MaxFileCache=512000. After doing that, every single thing works perfectly.

Interesting workaround.

Just for the record: still MaxPhysPage=20000 ? Almost the same values (20000 hex is in 4KB pages, so 524288 KB total memory).

However better do a sort of stress test with an audio file of say 5 minutes with autoreplay for about 30-60 minutes or so.

21 hours ago, deomsh said:

Interesting workaround.

Just for the record: still MaxPhysPage=20000 ? Almost the same values (20000 hex is in 4KB pages, so 524288 KB total memory).

However better do a sort of stress test with an audio file of say 5 minutes with autoreplay for about 30-60 minutes or so.

Nope I removed the MaxPhysPage setting.  Just the custom MaxFileCache value. And yeah, I'll do a stress test - will play an album start to finish.

Thanks for the info.

About a stress test: I believe playing autoreplay a short file many times is different from playing one album. My (unproven, probably 'wild') idea is with autoreplay the driver will be reactivated each time. But you are in an excellent position to test if there is any difference.