Because of the new Accelerated Hub Architecture of the i815E chipset, the "position" of the PCI bus has been changed due to the way the GMCH and the ICH (formerly North Bridge and South Bridge) talk to each other. That's why the Aureal drivers are giving odd problems.
Anyway, here is how to resolve the issue:
Be sure to download the latest reference drivers from
Vortex of Sound.
Boot into Windows and delete all devices relating to the soundcard.
Open au30mmed.inf in WordPad (file is located in c:\windows\inf if you already installed the drivers), do a find for "disable", and you will jump to the following: (If you need Sound Blaster Emulation, ONLY remove the semi-colon in front of the "HKR,Config,DisableBusDetection,1,1" line, if not, make sure your file looks exactly like below)
[AspenOverides.Addreg]
; virtual devices
;HKR,Config,DisableJoystick,1,1
;HKR,Config,DisableMPU401,1,1
HKR,Config,DisableDOSModemPort,1,1
HKR,Config,DisableSBFM,1,1
HKR,Config,DisableRealModeLegacySBFM,1,1 HKR,Config,DisableRealModeLegacySBFMUsingREM,1,1
HKR,Config,DisableSBFMIRQLevel,1,1
HKR,Config,DisableSBFMIRQSharing,1,1
HKR,Config,DisableBusDetection,1,1 ;
a3d ;HKR,Config,EnableA3DReserve,1,1
;HKR,Config,NumHost3DBuffers,1,6
HKR,Config,Reserve2DSRC,1,8
Reboot.
Enter the BIOS and set Reserve IRQ 5 to YES in the PCI/PNP IRQ Resource Exclusion menu.
When Windows boots up, it will now detect all other features of the card: MPU-401, gameport, and Sound Blaster Emulation (if you didn't remove the semi-colons in au30mmed.inf that disables this feature). When Windows asks for the driver when it detects your soundcard, point it to the au30mmed.inf file in the \windows\inf directory (this is the edited file).
Check your autoexec.bat and see if there is a "Set Blaster =" line and/or a "LH C:\WINDOWS\AU30DOS.COM" line. If you don't need SB emulation, rem these lines out.
