Simple question: why does my sound card corrupt my games??!?!

[showoff0450]

My SoundBlaster AudioPCI sound card, I believe, is causing all of my games to be screwed up.

I've gone a long time without a sound card - and all my games have worked fine. But today, when I just put in my new sound card... games like Half-Life, Ultima Online, etc. have all decided to stop working.

(For instance: when the sound card is in, I'd open up Half-Life, go into the main menu, and everything would be fine. But when I physically start to enter an ACTUAL Half-Life game, my computer screen just turns blank and I have to restart.)

Take the sound card out, and the games work again.

I can't return the sound card, it was given to me from a bud... is there anything I can do to get my games working again? (aside from just taking out the soundcard) I'm stumped.

Thanks
-Chris

P.S. I'm running the latest soundcard drivers, too...

 

[sandorski]

It may help if you gave some more info such as mobo, which PCI slot the soundcard is in, OS, etc.

 

[bacillus]

<< I've gone a long time without a sound card >>


does your m/board come with on board sound??
we'll need more to go on to give helpful answers.

 

[Maverick]

you tried re-installing the games right? Most of those games require a sound card. I know half-life does a wav file test when you first install it.

 

[Rankor]

I would check if the soundcard is conflicting with maybe the video card sharing irqs or something like that. Are the drivers for that card fairly recent? The ones that I'm using are dated 3/30/00.

I think I'm using the same card (Creative SB PCI 16 OEM) as it is listed in my Device Manager as SoundBlaster Audio PCI.

 

[CrackRabbit]

I had a similar problem with a friends machine,
it was a driver conflict between his winmodem and his sound card,
what you will want to do is remove both cards, clean anything having to do with any of them out of the registry (regedit) and then reinstall the cards, soundcard first then modem.
If thats not the case, i dont know what is.


CrackRabbit

 

[showoff0450]

I have 3 PCI slots in my comp.

1st one: AudioPCI soundcard
2nd one: Voodoo3
3rd one: SupraMax modem

I'm using Win98... I have no idea what mobo I have, I've been trying to figure that out forever, but it's a crappy one... that's all I know.

My mobo does have onboard sound... but that crapped out a long time ago. My system doesn't even detect it anymore, anyways.

Hopefully this will help out a little...

-Chris

 

[m2super]

Is this a AMD system?
If so there are known issues with the via chipsets and sblaster sound cards!

Is the onboard sound disabled? If not disable it!
Is the sblaster sharing IRQ's with anything? If so move the cards around till the sblaster is on its own irq!

 

[showoff0450]

Yep. It's an AMD 400 mhz K6-2, with onboard sound and video.

What do you mean &quot;known issues with the via chipsets and sblaster sound cards&quot;? When the card is in, the sound is fine except for when I enter games.

I can listen to mp3's fine, etc.

How do I disable the onboard sound device? Just physically unplug the thing?

Grr... does this mean I just have to get a new sound card? A non Sound Blaster?

 

[TunaBoo]

You may have a pc-chips mobo (sounds like it)

go over to http://pcchips.com.tw and browse the product pages. Look for a picture that matched up with yours.

 

[showoff0450]

Yeah, I know my mobo is crap, and I'm going to get a whole new mobo when I go off to college - but for now... I need to know what I have to do with my sound card.

Is there any way I can get it working?

Or do I have to buy another one?

 

[nabeels786]

yeah i had the same prob. you have to goto the BIOS and disable the onboard sound. then boot into safe mode, right click on &quot;my computer&quot; and click properties. and then in the devices tab, under &quot;sound,video and game controllers&quot; remove any entries for your onboard sound. then reinstall your sound card, it should work fine. i had the same prob with my onboard sound and when i installed my montego 2.

hope that helps,
nabeel

 

[showoff0450]

My onboard sound has been disabled for a long time - ever since it crapped out months ago...