Problem with drivers for soundcard

[yarn]

Ok.. This problem has already broken a toe (long story about a clumsy kick, a plastic bottle and a wall)..

I have just purchased a 8RDA+ board with LEGEND RAM (sold as Hyundai). I rebuilt my machine with above mentioned new HW. Installed Win2kPro (clean). All went rather well until I loaded my sound card drivers. The install crashed and I was not able to uninstall the drivers and thus lost sound all together.

My sound card is a VideoLogic SonicXplosion. It is picked up as a Crystal SoundFusion by W2K, and kinda works, although I can't load the control panel therefore I don't have EQ surround sound control etc. All of the existing HW was working perfectly with my old mainboard (Abit KT7) and RAM under Win2K WinME. Everything seems to be working under Win98, though I just got that running before I started this and haven’t installed anything other than the OS, so I’ll hold my breath on that one.

I have also observed the game port on the SonicXplosion has problems. It is telling me it can't use either of the IO address ranges due to lack of resources. However when I go through the used IO ranges 0200-0207 and 0208-020F are not in use. If I enable the onboard game port it shows in device manager as a standard game port and it uses either 201(hex) or 209(hex) without any change to the SonicXplosion game port. Bugger. Both of these addresses are sitting nicely in the ranges the card can't use.

I have not as yet updated to the latest BIOS (will be doing that soon) and I'm not sure if I have the latest chipset drivers on yet (having a bit of trouble finding the version number). I am running the only drivers available for the Sound Card

I have been back to see the mob I bought the sound card off and they didn't seem to give a flying f@ck about my problem (which also contributed to the sore toe)...
I am beginning to feel I am the only one of the face of the planet with this problem and only have 9 toes left :-D.


System Specs
W2K Pro/W98 dual boot
Epox 8RDA+
2 x 256 LEGEND L3264D36-643HDC5A PC2700 (cas 2.5?)
Duron 1000
Generic (Paradise) Nvidia Geforce4 440 MX 64Mb
VideoLogic SonicXplosion
Lucent chip Modem (Genius LT Win Modem)
Liteon 24102B CDRW
Asus E608 DVD
Seagate ST310212A
Quantum FireballP AS60.0
Bliss 300W PS (bought specially for this board)
Logitech 5.1 speaker system

[EPoX Tech]

hiya there - Welcome to the forums.

Which PCI slot is the card occupying ?

[Genius]

Hmm... shouldn't you be using the onboard sound? Or is that a pro audio card? I didn't think Crystal made any good audio hardware. Just a thought since you could remove it and likely have no trouble with onboard audio.

[MiGGinZ]

onboard sound for 8rda RoX

[yarn]

The card is high end and cost me $200 and is very very nice (at least while it's working) with CD digital in and many other features aimed toward home recording... Windows recognises it as the Crystal card (with the fault on the game port as described above). The Crystal card may be based on the same chipset (as is the Fortissimo II/III cards from Hercules). The card is fine under W98. Seeing the sound card is only a month or so old I am not about to chuck it out. So basically using the onboard sound is not an option considering the functionality I require
.
I have set all BIOS to Fail safe and Optimal (I guess fail safe would set back to this anyway).
Another thing I just remembered. When I try to install the SonicXplosion drivers, windows reports I have more recent drivers loaded (which I don't).

AAAArrrrrrggggghhhhh

What sound cards are you guys using with W2K Professional?

[EPoX Tech]

Originally posted by yarn
The card is high end and cost me $200 and is very very nice (at least while it's working) with CD digital in and many other features aimed toward home recording... Windows recognises it as the Crystal card (with the fault on the game port as described above). The Crystal card may be based on the same chipset (as is the Fortissimo II/III cards from Hercules). The card is fine under W98. Seeing the sound card is only a month or so old I am not about to chuck it out. So basically using the onboard sound is not an option considering the functionality I require
.
I have set all BIOS to Fail safe and Optimal (I guess fail safe would set back to this anyway).
Another thing I just remembered. When I try to install the SonicXplosion drivers, windows reports I have more recent drivers loaded (which I don't).

AAAArrrrrrggggghhhhh

What sound cards are you guys using with W2K Professional?

Sonic Explosion is only a Sonic Fury with DTS support and optical SPDIF. Inferior to Audigy 1 in many ways and far inferior to Audigy 2. It is priced at £68 in the UK ($102 USD). It is seen only as superior to Soundblaster Live 5.1.

Compare this to the audio of MCP-T through ALC650E

[EPoX Tech]

Actual specs of audio on this Sonic Xplosion card are :-

20 bit playback DAC
18 bit recording DAC, actual maximum recording 16bit = 48KHz
EAX, A3D, DTS, supplied with Win DVD4

[siztenboots]

How does this compare to the specs of my Epox 8rda+ onboard sound ?

It was talk about this Epox having 96khz recording ability that made me take the gamble. So far I can't get above 44.1Khz ?

[yarn]

Yeah ET. If you want to send me the AU$200 I payed for the card I'll accept that as an appropriate response. I am rather dissapointed you seem to have visited a web site and quoted specs I am already aware of. May not be the best on the block, but I was hoping I would be able to avoid the shocking service level I have experienced with Creative. I am a techie and was hoping for something appropriate.

[EPoX Tech]

I guarantee I have not visted a website to gather such information - I neither have the desire, time or inclination - it was just information that I knew based upon the rather poor specs of the card.

[yarn]

Don't take me the wrong way. Thus far I am very impressed with your product. And I certainly don't want to offend you, or for that matter anyone else.
However seeing I only purchased the card 5 - 6 weeks ago, I just can't afford to give up on this. $200 is far too much money for me just to throw away. I have seen the assistance others have received and am miffed at the speed of dismissal of this problem. I have already bought the board so you guys don't need to sell me the sound capabilities.
If you are like me, answering the everyday "My printer doesn't work", "My screen is flickering", "Which hole do I plug my modem into". "DOCSOpen isn't letting me open a file" questions gets very tedious. I long for the opportunity to get my teeth into something challenging. But hey. If you just want to give up... Well it's just not cricket...

[Genius]

Since you have only just set your system up, I would highly suggest a reformat and try again (I have seen this inability to reinstall sound card drivers before with a SB Live and it sounds just like what you're experiencing). This time you wish to rearrange your PCI cards so that your sound card gets it's own IRQ... that is if it doesn't already. Also, make sure APIC mode 1.4 is enabled in the bios. My system runs much better, and oddly enough scores higher in 3DMark with APIC enabled. Do not install any PCI cards in slots 2 or 6 if you can avoid it, as they share with the AGP adapter. I keep slots 1, 2, and 6 empty as a rule of thumb.

[EPoX Tech]

I have asked which PCI slot with no response - you can't proceed further without this to see how the interupt table may be affected.

[yarn]

Sorry ET, thought I had responded to that one. I have tried slot two and three thus far.

Genius, I'll check it out. As far as reformatting and reinstalling I have done that with
Win2000 Pro SP2
Win XP Pro
Win 98 SE
Win Me

I have now tested the card under WinXP. It behaves in exactly the same manner as it does under Win2000.

[Genius]

I keep my own sound card in slot 4 and it works great (gets it's own IRQ).