No sound -- driver/resource problem?

[Rayista Geoff]

Hi, everybody! Haven't been around in *ages*, but I wanted to consult with the assembled company about a problem.

I'd been playing a game (Might & Magic 6, actually) which had crashed on me a couple of times (blue screen o' death. I foolishly didn't note the exact message, but it was something really unspecific). When I started up, I noticed that there was a gray screen instead of the company's animation which I'd seen previously. However, just hitting ESC got me to the main intro game screen and I had no other video problems. (Note: the game's FAQ said that a grey screen could be the result of a video driver not fully DirectX compatible but I hadn't had any problems before.)

That's not my question, though. After I turned the music off using the in-game control panel, I noticed that the sound had gone completely dead. No sound effects or character speech either, even though those sliders were still at 100%. Putting the in-game music back at 100% did nothing. In fact, the sound seemed to have died completely. Nothing from audio CDs either, for example. Plugging a set of headphones into the back got nothing. It seems as though the soundcard is not outing anything.

A cursory check of the Device Manager shows no incompatibilities or problems, but there is a clue. When I try to preview, for example, the startup sound from the sound icon in the control panel, I get an error message saying "Windows cannot play the sound [gives path]. It is possible that the sound card is in use." [Note: I'm translating from Spanish here, so the English error message may be slightly different.]

Also, earlier today, but after the problem started, I got a similar sounding message when I tried to run RealPlayer 8 having just downloaded it. It said "Cannot open audio device. Another application may be using it." I didn't think anything of it at first, because I was haing proxy problems as well and could never get it to work anyway. However, the two sound too similar to be unconnected.

It certainly does sound like some setting somewhere has gotten munged. Any thoughts on what that setting might be? Or should I just, say, delete all the sound elements from the device manager and get Windows to re-auto-detect the sound card?

By the by, I'm running Windows 95, with a separate Soundblaster 1024 sound card, and my motherboard has no built-in sound of any kind.

Anyway, any ideas much appreciated!

Geoff

[Whyzman]

RG,

Have you accessed your Volume Control Panel and checked to see if anything might have been muted in the process of the turning things off in the Game Control Panel?

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May all your dealings in life be win/win!


Whyzman
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Reserved for Punishing Humor...A Pessimist's blood is always B-negative!

[Rayista Geoff]

Originally posted by Whyzman:
RG,

Have you accessed your Volume Control Panel and checked to see if anything might have been muted in the process of the turning things off in the Game Control Panel?



Sorry, forgot to mention that! Yeah, I did check that the volume control wasn't actually turned down or the mute box checked or anything. However, I do notice the following: in the volume control panel, both the "Wave" and the "Synthesizer" faders have columns next to them (unlike the others) and the "Wave" column is filled about 1/3 of the way by three green bars. There's nothing in the column next to the Synthesizer fader. Moving the Wave fader around doesn't seem to have any effect on the green bars and there's still no actual sound coming out. I assume these green bars represent a recording or playback level of some kind. Could this be an indication that there's a signal being generated from somewhere and why Windows therefore thinks the soundcard is "in use"?

Geoff

[Sylvander]

Hello Rayista Geoff

In a circumstance like this where the cause of the problem is almost certainly an unfortunate configuration change, you should immediately go to a DOS prompt, and type "scanreg /restore" to go back to the copy of the Registry [and associated configuration files] immediately before the unfortunate change. [You should not have added or subtracted any sotware or hardware since that copy was taken.] The change will disappear as if by magic and you're back to the way things were.

You may still be able to do this if one of the five copies does not incude the problem. If you do not react quickly to a problem and continue attempting to boot and the boot's succeed and backups of these bad Registries are taken, then the five copies will all be bad.
You would then be forced to restore a good backup or re-format the drive and re-install the software.

[Rayista Geoff]

Originally posted by Sylvander:

In a circumstance like this where the cause of the problem is almost certainly an unfortunate configuration change,

Yes, this does seem plausible. It's certainly doesn't seem to be a resource/IRQ conflict, which is what I thought at first.

If you do not react quickly to a problem and continue attempting to boot and the boot's succeed and backups of these bad Registries are taken, then the five copies will all be bad.
You would then be forced to restore a good backup or re-format the drive and re-install the software.

I'm at work now, rather than at home, so I can't check this for sure, but just from day-to-day use I think I've successfully booted up more than five times. Is there any way to manually edit the relevant Registry entry somehow with regedit rather than having to restore the whole thing? Or would it be simpler/better/possible to just boot into Safe Mode, remove the soundcard from the device manager, and then redetect it/install the drivers?

Geoff



[This message has been edited by Rayista Geoff (edited 05-08-2002).]

[mjc]

If you have gone past the number of backups then yes you probably are better off going into Safe Mode and removing/reinstalling the sound card....could be from one to a couple of dozen registry changes.

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

[sea69]

would scanreg /fix be a possible solution here?

http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/wink.gif



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homepage (http://www.seanweb1.homestead.com/index.html)

[Rayista Geoff]

Well, I went back and uninstalled and reinstalled the sound card (followed the directions in the relevant Creative Labs knowledge base article just to make sure I got all the files) and I've solved something, but the problem remains.

I no longer get the "soundcard in use" error messages, but I still have no sound. Could it be that there is still a Registry problem that reinstallation wouldn't have solved? If so, do people think that sea69's solution will work?

Originally posted by sea69:
would scanreg /fix be a possible solution here?



Or will I have to go back to the "safety" *.da0 files (since I don't have a registry backup (shame on me, I know))?

If it's not the registry, is there any other software explanation? Or are we by process of elimination looking at a hardware problem (say, a broken audio out jack or something) in addition to the software problem that reinstallation fixed?

Geoff

[Sylvander]

Hello Rayista Geoff

I'm fairly certain you don't have a hardware problem.

I had something like this happen to me a while back and it was a configuration problem but I can't remember the details or how I fixed it.

I assume that the programme you were in made a change to a setting in the Registry [or possibly a configuration or initialisation file]to tell other programmes "lay off, don't touch, this is in use by me and I dont want you interfering", but it did not undo that change. So how do you find the needle in the haystack.

Weeelll, if you had a copy of a Registry "Spying Utility" [like Regmon.exe] you would start it running [recording all Registry accesses and their results] then immediately start your desired sound activity [which fails] then stop recording and study the huuuuge list of accesses to look for the rather obscure sign of a failure to retrieve the info needed to produce the desired activity.
I've done it myself with some success but you need to be a real expert to understand what your looking at and spot the signs and causes of failure.
The good thing about it is that it helps you understand what the PC is doing in the background and if you saw the number and speed of Registry accesses just to do the simplest thing you'd be astonished.

That's why I figure it's much simpler to take backups and restore things rather than search for that one little switch in a million which fixes the problem.

[mjc]

Now that you have your card reinstalled check the multimedia applet in control panel and make sure that it is selected for bothe recording and playback.....

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

[Rayista Geoff]

Many years ago, a friend of mine was channel surfing late at night and came across a self-styled "punk" magician. He had the standard mohawk and torn jacket, and after every trick he would scream at the audience "It's magic!!! F--k you!!!"

Well, that's how I think computers feel about me most of the time. I got my sound working again. I don't quite know why, but it seems to be working.

After I reinstalled the soundcard, the sound still wasn't working and, in fact, what I didn't mention was that various old games I was playing like M&M VI and Interstate '76 stopped working entirely. They'd hang immediately after launching and I'd have to reset. So I figured I'd try to restore the registry. I decided to go back to the .1st registry files, since I figured the .DA0 files would have the problem as well. Uninstalled M&M, renamed all the files as appropriate and restarted.

It all went perfectly smoothly and as expected, except when I reinstalled M&M it would still hang just after launch. So I decided to go back to the original "broken" registry, since things like my mail and browser were working fine and I didn't want to have to reinstall them.

Just for the heck of it, though, when I started up yesterday, I thought I'd try some of my other games and started up MAME. I don't know what possessed me to do that, but lo and behold, sound came out of the speakers. Then when I went back to M&M, it worked too. The sound problem was fixed, and also the minor video problem I mentioned too(showing a grey screen instead of the animated 3DO logo).

So, what have we learned here? What I guess must have happened is that the problem wasn't with the Registry per se, but rather with some ancillary file which got fixed when Windows partially reinstalled itself after I replaced system.dat with system.1st. If the problem really was with the Registry, I'm not sure why it should have fixed itself, since I just went back to the old version after substituting system.1st didn't help. Anyway, I guess what my comupter's telling me is "It's magic!!! F--k you!!!"

Thanks to all for your kind help and suggestions!

Geoff

[Sylvander]

Hello Geoff

Don't do it Geoff!

Don't adopt the fatalistic attitude that:

computers are magic mumbo-jumbo beyond comprehension.

The more you know how they work, the better your understanding, the better you can visualise whats happening unseen under the surface, the better you react to events and the more they come under your control.

Your problem was about the match required between:

configuration settings
software installed
and the hardware it controls

You had one or more "bad" configuration settings and your software was no longer making your hardware do what you wanted done.

The problem is finding the particular little "switches" to flick to put things back as they should be.

It's often much easier just to go back to a "good" copy of the Registry [and associated configuration files] which perfectly matches the software and hardware and works well.

You managed to do this half by chance but you need to do it by design and pre-planning.

Get yourself a system of backup restoration.

Once that's in place; when you hit any configuration or software problem, there's no need to tear your hair out trying to discover the cause, just re-format and restore a "good" backup and your system will be back to the good working state it was in when you recorded the software and configuration setup. Just make sure you haven't changed the hardware since then.

The message there is that if you intend to change your hardware [and the system is working well] you should backup immediately before the change and take another immediately after the change [provided the system is working well after the change].

It's no use taking a backup of a system which isn't working!

By the way I seem to remember that when a serious problem is detected by Widows it automatically restores a backed-up registry taken by "scanreg" which is why problems can "disappear as if by magic".

[Rayista Geoff]

Originally posted by Sylvander:

Don't do it Geoff!

Don't adopt the fatalistic attitude that:

computers are magic mumbo-jumbo beyond comprehension.



Yeah, I know. I meant the reference to the punk magician to be slightly tongue-in-cheek. I have some experience with hardware troubleshooting (not as much with software), and I've had plenty of experiences where you make some change and it unexpectedly "clicks". Like when you've got three IDE devices that you need to hook up and you spend an age swapping cables around and changing master/slave jumper settings and one of the combinations suddenly works, or you reseat a component for the third time and that's what does it. Sure the "real" explanation is dust, or a bad contact, or a bad cable or something, but I just thank my lucky stars and move on. Fear not, I haven't gotten to the sacrificing goats stage just yet, although if anything will drive me to it, it's Windows! http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/smile.gif

Geoff

[mjc]

Geoff,

For computers, it is chickens...goats are for cars.... http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.