This past weekend I bought a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card - but after I installed the card and its drivers, two of my Microsoft games crashed with a BSOD! The games had run fine with my previous SB Live! card, but I don't know what to do next.

The remainder of my current configuration is as follows:

AMD Athlon XP 1600+ CPU
256MB DDR266 RAM
ECS K7S5A motherboard w/SiS735 chipset
40GB Maxtor D740X 6L040J2 hard drive
ATI Radeon 64MB DDR VIVO AGP graphics card
56K v.90 PCI modem

Now what? I could go back to my "crappy" SB Live! sound card, or I could replace my Radeon with a GeForce-based graphics card, or I could replace my motherboard [admittedly, the parts store that I bought my CPU/mobo/RAM combo from only carries motherboards with older/slower chipsets than my current motherboard has; that store has a GigaByte mobo with an AMD76#/VIA 686B chipset, and an Asus mobo with an ALi Magik-1 (original rev.) chipset].

AAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Which of those three options is best for me? And the fourth? Go back to my old Intel Pentium III/700 Slot-1 CPU with a suitable backup mobo?

Feel free to answer these questions.

Randall

P.S. The same problems occur when those games are run with the VxD driver (which, BTW, is the latest VxD driver version) installed on either Windows 98 SE or Windows Me. I forgot a fifth option: Should I wipe out Windows 98 SE and re-install Windows Me, and install the WDM driver instead of the VxD driver?

Sweet system, don't downgrade for an old game. Some MS games are known to have many problems. I guess you've already tried removing and reinstalling first the game, then the driver? Latest driver? I guess it could be a possible Radeon issue.

Did you try here?

http://www.amdmb.com/vb/index.php

Or here?

http://www.3dsoundsurge.com/cgi-bin/...hreads.pl?Cat=

Here too.

http://www.nvnews.net/cgi-bin/ultima...i?action=intro

Here too.

http://rage3d.com/

But you probably know all those sites, right?

Did you properly uninstall the crap blaster?
Do you have the latest version of Direct X installed?
Update your motherboard and video card drivers.
Download the latest drivers for the TBSC, and try to find any relevant patches for those games you are having trouble with.

Go here for more support:


http://www.viahardware.com/scfaq.shtm

This place explains some issues with SB Live! drivers and the Santa Cruz card (it advises to do a clean reinstallation of windoze).

Blame microsoft

DONT replace 98se with me !!
I bet even more games wont work.

Update drivers would be the best bet.

TBSC kicks major ass off of a clean XP install.....

Info's hearsay.

Quote:



I gave up on the 98SE drivers; the latest available drivers for that OS (build 4081, which is the very same version that came with the included CD) still has bugs. I noticed that some of the Windows sounds with that VxD driver don't sound right.

Audio&Me: the SiS735 chipset doesn't need any drivers other than the AGP patch (version 1.09 is the latest). And the drivers for my Radeon are already the latest officially supported release (build 7189). And as for DirectX, I AM running the latest released version (8.1).

Here is an update on the Radeon drivers:

The 7189 build that I'm currently running is no longer the newest driver version, nor is it any longer supported. The newest supported version is now Build 9009, with 9013 being a "beta" version. However, the 9009 driver is a whopping over-16MB download, which will take over an hour to download with my crappo dial-up connection!

I may download that driver in the near future.
______________________________________
Also, an update on my TBSC:

ALL of my Direct3D/DirectSound games crash into a BSOD within seconds of launch with the VxD driver (for Windows 98/Me). Which comes to show you that the VxD driver is still buggy.

I haven't tried any gaming yet with the WDM driver (for Windows Me/2000/XP) - but I will shortly.

At least you are not downloading the entire SB Liveware drivers which is like 5 times larger.

I think the size of the drivers are ridiculous today. Why does the driver have to be 16MB? Can't they just distribute the core files without the fancy features?

I tried my system again with the WDM drivers for the TBSC under Windows Me (that driver won't work at all with Windows 98SE)... No more BSODs when running my Microshaft (or is that Microsoft?) games! However, some of the sounds are a little choppy right after game launch.

The problem is the naff VxD drivers for Windows 9x (TBSC owners who use Windows Me and WinDVD must use the VxD driver; otherwise, for TBSC/Windows Me users, the use of the WDM drivers instead of the VxD drivers is strongly recommended).

Maybe I'll check my K7S5A's BIOS settings for ACPI; if I were to upgrade to Windows XP, having ACPI enabled will force all hardware to share the same IRQ - the same IRQ as the ACPI support itself uses (usually IRQ9).

Hi,

The only really safe way to get rid of Live! drivers is a reinstall of Windows.

I'd use the WDM drivers over the VXD drivers any day except for the WinDVD issue - word one why I'd run PowerDVD in your shoes (I do under XP).

The Santa Cruz under XP is a thing of beauty - those drivers are pretty much bulletproof and so is the OS. My best recommendation is an upgrade to that OS (a real one!) and use those WDM drivers.

Hope this helps...

I think I may re-try the TBSC on my backup HD with Win 98SE and the VxD drivers; I don't want to upset my main drive. I think I had left the DOS legacy game support enabled in the VxD drivers, which may have caused all of the DirectSound games to crash with a BSOD. Fortunately, that legacy support is easy to enable or disable: Simply run the Santa Cruz Control Panel, and check or uncheck the box next to "Enable DOS Legacy Support" to enable or disable the feature. You should leave that support disabled most of the time - and enable it just before running a program that requires legacy DOS support (just be sure to disable the legacy support when you're done with that legacy program).

Do yourself a favor and just get the Terratec EWX 24/96. You don't really want all that fancy 3D sound junk over sound quality do you? DirectSound 2D should be fine, your games will still work.

Sorry it took so long. Well, many of those audiophile sound cards cost way more than what I want to spend right now; even the cheapest Terratec card costs well over $100. Why should I spend that much when I have a lot of other things that I want more? And some of my games won't work at all with those "audiophile" sound cards; they require 3D sound support in hardware, and any attempt at using the "audiophile" sound card will result in either no audio whatsoever OR gaming framerates dropping so low that it is rendered unplayable.

BTW, I am planning to upgrade to a 5.1 setup - but most of those audiophile cards don't support multichannel audio at all whatsoever (unless I am willing to spend an astronomical amount of money), rendering those home-theater-like multimedia speakers unusable. So given my limited budget, if I buy any of those true 24/96 cards, I might as well downgrade all of the other parts of my system just to not go over my limit [i.e. sell off most of the components of my current system and downgrade to something like a 900MHz Celeron running on an Intel 810-chipset-based mobo, integrated non-upgradable graphics, no CD-RW or DVD drive whatsoever (only a read-only CD-ROM drive), a small 10GB 4,500-rpm hard drive, and only 64MB of SDRAM].