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Directsound Problems, Apparently
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Posted by: Keith_Suicide
Relevent system specs:
Intel 1.8 ghz processor on an Intel d845bg motherboard. Integrated motherboard soundmax digital audio. OS: Windows XP home edition: SP1.
OK, here's a doozy. I don't know if it's related to DirectX 9.0a, but I sortof recall this problem starting to occur around the time that DX9 came out. When I play a game, or Winamp, sometimes it works fine. Later, I close the game, restart it, and have no sound. Or, if it's Winamp, I get a message that says "Bad DirectSound driver". Funny thing is, when that message pops up I *do* hear the default system error beep. Now, half the time when this happens I can go to the System Hardware Manager, uninstall the sound card, reboot, let it detect the sound card again, and then it works again... for a little while. Rinse, repeat.
I called Tech Support about this, and they suggested I download the newest sound card drivers and the newest BIOS. Check. No beans, still same problem.
Also, as for reverting to an older version of the driver, I do not/cannot find/ the CD rom that came with all the drivers for my system. And Intels site does not list a download for the past versions of this particular device driver.
Posted by: saruman
Soundmax provides drivers to various motherboard/OEM computer manufacturers. You might give ASUS' or MSI's drivers for your chipset a try. Also these companies may have an earlier/newer driver available.
Posted by: Bleyn
Does just rebooting the system help at all once the sound goes blooie? Or is uninstall/reinstall the only thing that seems to help?
Also, you say the system error beep still works. That is probably not unusual if the failure is DX related. I don't know that Windows pipes WAV files through DX at all. It may still just pipe those straight to the sound card. However, it does bring up the question of if reinstalling DirectX 9.0a helps at all? Maybe you got a bad install of DX. A reinstall probably won't help, but it might.
Have you checked to see if maybe there is a resource conflict? Sometimes they show up in odd fashions. If the sound is sharing an IRQ or a memory range with some other device, it may run into conflicts and decide that it just wants to sulk. Despite all the hype, PCI-type PnP devices do not always play well with others, even the ones built into the motherboard. In fact, some just plain do not like to share their toys any better than your average 2-year old child.
Ultimately, if nothing else works, you may want to consider installing another sound card in the system. Windows is usually less fussy about having two sound cards than it can be with multiple video cards.
In fact, in my main system, the mobo has onboard sound and I have almost no problems using a SB 512 PCI with it. The only thing that doesn't work is DOS emulation. And that's not a big deal because the system is just a little too fast for old DOS games anyway.
Posted by: saruman
Windows pipes the sound without going through DirectX. DirectX is just a convenient API for games. So if windows can play sound fine but not DX then the failure is drivers driven or DX driven. Usually a bit of both.
Posted by: Bleyn
I thought that might be the case still, but wouldn't put it past MS to eventually rewrite their sound and video routines so that it does go through DX all the time. It might not make sense, but when does it ever with them?
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