Sound issues with my PC

[Raven]

Hopefully someone here can help me out.

I have been having problems with my PC playing sounds/music. The weird thing is sometimes they work fine, other times they don't work at all.

My specs:
Win XP
Aureal Audio Sound Card (cheap, but never had problems with it until I upgraded to XP).

Software:
Easy CD Creator 5
Windows Media Player
Directx 9.0

File Types:
MP3's, WMA's, and CDA's.

First off, I ran Directx Diag (or whatever the checker is called) and all the sounds tested fine, so I dont think I am having sound card issues. Whenever I try to run the CM4 demo, or OOTP5, I don't get any sounds, but that isn't my main issue because almost everyone is having issues with these games. The problem I most want to fix is playing music on my computer. I have some files in my music folder on my harddrive, and some I want to play off of CD's.

Sometimes I play music just fine, and then other times, the file/track is playing but no sound is coming out. If I reboot they seem to work fine, but if I open up one of the games mentioned above (where the sound doesn't work) then close it and try to play music, I'm not getting any music either. I guess I should try turning the sounds off in those games and then rebooting to see if that works, but I can't figure out why its not playing music even after the games have been closed for hours.

I can provide any other info/specs that you might need, but figured I'd throw out the basics to see if anyone can help me out.

Thanks.

[Raven]

bump

[Craptacular]

I doubt it will do anything for your case, but disconnect and reconnect all the cables connected to speakers, sound card, etc. Take your sound card out of it's slot and put it back in. It's amazing how often this works for various computer problems. Sometimes things just need to be reseated.

[Tarkus]

What drivers are you using for the sound card? Are they specific to that card or the generic XP drivers? If you are not using the XP drivers you might want to try that. Also, make sure whatever drivers you are using they are the latest. I actually had problems with the Soundblaster Live card after upgrading to XP and I ended up purchasing a new Hercules card. Also, does your motherboard come with onboard audio? If so, is it disabled? Also, if you do have onboard audio you might to disable your current audio driver and try that. Really need more information to try and resolve this one. However, if your card is old and your drivers are old you might have to upgrade.

Tarkus

[MizzouRah]

I would definitly goto somewhere like here and see if there are some specific drivers for your particular sound card and XP.

That's probably your issue.

If all else fails, I think you can get a decent XP compatible sound card for $10-$20.


Todd

[Raven]

Thanks, guys. I havent tried any of this yet because I kind of isolated the problem, though I still dont know what the problem is.

I rebooted and tried playing cd's - worked fine. tried playing music files - worked fine. opened OOTP5 and the in-game sounds didnt work in there. shut down OOTP and then tried playing the same cd and music files but they didnt work. rebooted and the cd and music files worked fine again.

The problem seems to have something to do with DirectX 9 or OOTP5.

Does it still sound like a sound card issue?

[Airhog]

sounds to me like an issue with ootp5. In the old days it was possbile for a game to take over your sound card and not give it back. Could be happening here. I would find the newest drivers first and see if that fixed it. Oh and download dx9a

[MizzouRah]

Good troubleshooting Raven, I think you're close to a resolution.


Todd