Hi,
I'm the computer tech support guy for alot of my friends and family (y'all know what its like), and I've run into a problem with my friend's computer that I cannay solve. First the background story:
My friend comes up to me one day and says: "My computer is screwed. Whenever it boots up it shows a blue screen and says strange things that I dont understand." I say, "Have no fear, I shall come and fix it."
So I go to his house, and sure enough, Windows (he has Windows 98) is showing a BSOD whenever it boots up. The BSOD seems to be occuring as soon as Explorer.exe launches. The first thing I tried to do was to boot into Safe Mode. But it would still BSOD before I had time to do anything useful. So I decided to do a Windows reinstall.
He gave me the 98 disk and I whipped it into the drive and rebooted. But to my surprise the computer ignored the CD drive and booted off the hard drive. The computer had probably been used in a corporate environment where they didnt want the employees using boot disks. BIOS setup was password protected, and, no, my friend didnt know the password.
However, I suddenly remembered something that I had read in some 1000 page PC hardware tome of mine. Some mobos will reset the BIOS password if you boot the PC with a certain jumper switched to a different place. So I unscrewed the PC's case and looked around. There happened to be one jumper near the BIOS so I switched it. The computer refused to boot. So I switched it back. The computer booted and when I went into the BIOS setup....there was no password. So kids, just remember this: if all else fails just switch random jumpers on the mobo. This tip alone is worth all the time you have spent reading this post because it may one day save your life!!!1
Or maybe it wont. But I digress....
Once I was in the BIOS setup, I fixed it so it would boot off the CD before booting off the HD. I reinstalled Windows. But it didnt work. There was still a BSOD. I could have tried formatting the HD, but my friend wanted to keep his files. So I did another Windows install and put it in C:\WIN instead of C:\WINDOWS. This time it worked.
I left my friend to the task of reinstalling all his drivers because I thought he could do it. He couldnt so I had to come back to his house another day. I got all the drivers installed except the sound card's driver. I don't remember what sound card he had, but I think it was some kind of Sound Blaster. He no longer had the driver so I downloaded it from the manufacturor's web site.
That is the background story. Now here's the problem: the sound doesnt work. Whenever I would start a program/game that uses sound, the computer would freeze. Actually, it was only freezing when I was loading programs that use DirectSound. On older games that do not use DirectSound (like Myst) there was no problem. I tried running dxdiag.exe, and it also freezes the computer. I downloaded the latest version of DirectX, but it doesnt help.
I dont know what to do. I have done obvious things like reinstall the drivers, check for conflicts and all that. But I am clueless on what to do now.
Any ideas? What can I do to fix this? What can I do to find out why DirectSound is crashing the PC?
--king4lex
I'm the computer tech support guy for alot of my friends and family (y'all know what its like), and I've run into a problem with my friend's computer that I cannay solve. First the background story:
My friend comes up to me one day and says: "My computer is screwed. Whenever it boots up it shows a blue screen and says strange things that I dont understand." I say, "Have no fear, I shall come and fix it."
So I go to his house, and sure enough, Windows (he has Windows 98) is showing a BSOD whenever it boots up. The BSOD seems to be occuring as soon as Explorer.exe launches. The first thing I tried to do was to boot into Safe Mode. But it would still BSOD before I had time to do anything useful. So I decided to do a Windows reinstall.
He gave me the 98 disk and I whipped it into the drive and rebooted. But to my surprise the computer ignored the CD drive and booted off the hard drive. The computer had probably been used in a corporate environment where they didnt want the employees using boot disks. BIOS setup was password protected, and, no, my friend didnt know the password.
However, I suddenly remembered something that I had read in some 1000 page PC hardware tome of mine. Some mobos will reset the BIOS password if you boot the PC with a certain jumper switched to a different place. So I unscrewed the PC's case and looked around. There happened to be one jumper near the BIOS so I switched it. The computer refused to boot. So I switched it back. The computer booted and when I went into the BIOS setup....there was no password. So kids, just remember this: if all else fails just switch random jumpers on the mobo. This tip alone is worth all the time you have spent reading this post because it may one day save your life!!!1
Or maybe it wont. But I digress....
Once I was in the BIOS setup, I fixed it so it would boot off the CD before booting off the HD. I reinstalled Windows. But it didnt work. There was still a BSOD. I could have tried formatting the HD, but my friend wanted to keep his files. So I did another Windows install and put it in C:\WIN instead of C:\WINDOWS. This time it worked.
I left my friend to the task of reinstalling all his drivers because I thought he could do it. He couldnt so I had to come back to his house another day. I got all the drivers installed except the sound card's driver. I don't remember what sound card he had, but I think it was some kind of Sound Blaster. He no longer had the driver so I downloaded it from the manufacturor's web site.
That is the background story. Now here's the problem: the sound doesnt work. Whenever I would start a program/game that uses sound, the computer would freeze. Actually, it was only freezing when I was loading programs that use DirectSound. On older games that do not use DirectSound (like Myst) there was no problem. I tried running dxdiag.exe, and it also freezes the computer. I downloaded the latest version of DirectX, but it doesnt help.
I dont know what to do. I have done obvious things like reinstall the drivers, check for conflicts and all that. But I am clueless on what to do now.
Any ideas? What can I do to fix this? What can I do to find out why DirectSound is crashing the PC?
--king4lex
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