Windows 98SE Onboard Sound issue with P4 motherboards. \ VOGONS

Windows 98SE Onboard Sound issue with P4 motherboards.

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First post, by Totempole

Posted on 2021-10-23, 00:00

Totempole Offline

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It's been a while since I've worked on installing Windows 98SE to a Pentium 4 machine, but I don't recall having the issues I'm experiencing now.

I can't for the life of me get the onboard sound cards to work properly, even though I'm using the drivers provided on the motherboard manufacturer's website.

The first issues I ran into were with ADI Soundmax onboard audio, where the drivers would install perfectly, and I'd even get sound within Windows (Startup, Shut Down sound etc), but I couldn't play any .wav or .mid files. It would also fail the DirectSound and DirectMusic tests. Of course there would also be no audio in any games I attempted to load. Updating to DirectX 8.1 made no difference. When using the same drivers on Windows ME, everything works perfectly. While these are WDM drivers, they are definitely meant to be Windows 98SE compatible.

Today, I tried installing 98SE to another P4 machine. This time with Realtek audio onboard. I ran into exactly the same issue. Windows sounds worked, but nothing else. DirectX tests also failing. This time however, Installing ME and the same drivers resulted in badly distorted audio as well as partial failure in DirectX tests.

Another Scenario which may or may not be unrelated was with my AMD AthlonXP NForce2 chipset motherboard. In this case, the audio was distorted through the left channel, and would freeze up after running a DirectSound game for 5 or so minutes.

A quick fix to all of the above issues would simply be to install Windows 98SE compatible PCI Sound Cards in each, but I'd really like to get to the underlying cause of these issues, since I don't recall experiencing issues like this before with similar motherboards.

Notably, these are socket 775 motherboards, where in the past I've been using 478 boards, but the underlying chipsets are very similar.

The board with with the Soundmax Audio is an ASUS P5PE-VM with an Intel 865G chipset, and the board with the Realtek Audio is an SiS661GX chipset.

I also ran into the exact same issue with an Intel D865GLC board, also with Soundmax Audio.

Does anyone perhaps have some insight as to what the issue might be? Is there perhaps an update I need to apply to enable Windows 98SE to better handle WDM drivers? I feel like this must be an oversight on my part somewhere along the line.

Any advice or input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance! ☺

My Retro Gaming PC:
Pentium III 450MHz Katmai Slot 1
Transcend 256MB PC133
Gigabyte GA-6BXC
MSI Geforce 2 MX400 AGP
Ensoniq ES1371 PCI
Sound Blaster AWE64 ISA

Reply 1 of 5, by stealthjoe

Posted on 2021-10-26, 00:53

stealthjoe Offline

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It looks like probably a case of bad onboard audio ics. I had a related problem with my 845 motherboard. It has a SoundMax chip where the drivers would install, but no sound would ever come through. Had to resort to using pci sound cards.
You could check the traces leading to the ic for any corrosion or bent connections.

Intel 845GEBV2, Pentium 4 2.4 Ghz, Geforce FX5600 256MB, 512MB RAM, 160GB HDD, Sound Blaster Live! SB0100 - Win 98/XP

Reply 2 of 5, by Totempole

Posted on 2021-10-26, 12:12

Totempole Offline

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stealthjoe wrote on 2021-10-26, 00:53:

It looks like probably a case of bad onboard audio ics. I had a related problem with my 845 motherboard. It has a SoundMax chip where the drivers would install, but no sound would ever come through. Had to resort to using pci sound cards.
You could check the traces leading to the ic for any corrosion or bent connections.

Thanks for the response. I can definitely rule out it being an issue with the Audio IC itself, with the exception of the AMD board which still needs more testing.

All of the boards audio outputs work perfectly under Windows XP, and most work under Windows ME as well. The key issue here is they don't seem to work correctly under Windows 98SE for some reason. I suspect it may have to do with the WDM drivers supplied by the manufacturer for Windows 98SE not actually being fully compatible with the OS.

Windows ME seems to have better support for WDM drivers that 98SE, which makes me wonder if there isn't perhaps an update for Windows 98SE that could potentially resolve this issue.

My Retro Gaming PC:
Pentium III 450MHz Katmai Slot 1
Transcend 256MB PC133
Gigabyte GA-6BXC
MSI Geforce 2 MX400 AGP
Ensoniq ES1371 PCI
Sound Blaster AWE64 ISA

Reply 3 of 5, by gerry

Posted on 2021-10-26, 12:53

gerry Offline

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Joined: 2020-08-12, 04:06

Totempole wrote on 2021-10-26, 12:12:
Thanks for the response. I can definitely rule out it being an issue with the Audio IC itself, with the exception of the AMD boa […]
Show full quote

stealthjoe wrote on 2021-10-26, 00:53:

It looks like probably a case of bad onboard audio ics. I had a related problem with my 845 motherboard. It has a SoundMax chip where the drivers would install, but no sound would ever come through. Had to resort to using pci sound cards.
You could check the traces leading to the ic for any corrosion or bent connections.

Thanks for the response. I can definitely rule out it being an issue with the Audio IC itself, with the exception of the AMD board which still needs more testing.

All of the boards audio outputs work perfectly under Windows XP, and most work under Windows ME as well. The key issue here is they don't seem to work correctly under Windows 98SE for some reason. I suspect it may have to do with the WDM drivers supplied by the manufacturer for Windows 98SE not actually being fully compatible with the OS.

Windows ME seems to have better support for WDM drivers that 98SE, which makes me wonder if there isn't perhaps an update for Windows 98SE that could potentially resolve this issue.

the fact that XP works and ME too (mostly) and that these are 775 boards suggests something about the drivers not having been properly tested or maybe relying on some other update that cannot be assumed on a fresh 98se install. Are you using all 'official' 98se drivers for the motherboard and all other things?

if so and its still failing then i'm not sure, i might in that situation then have to give up and use with ME or XP, or consider a pci sound card

Reply 4 of 5, by stealthjoe

Posted on 2021-10-26, 14:51

stealthjoe Offline

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Totempole wrote on 2021-10-26, 12:12:

Thanks for the response. I can definitely rule out it being an issue with the Audio IC itself, with the exception of the AMD board which still needs more testing.

All of the boards audio outputs work perfectly under Windows XP, and most work under Windows ME as well. The key issue here is they don't seem to work correctly under Windows 98SE for some reason. I suspect it may have to do with the WDM drivers supplied by the manufacturer for Windows 98SE not actually being fully compatible with the OS.

Windows ME seems to have better support for WDM drivers that 98SE, which makes me wonder if there isn't perhaps an update for Windows 98SE that could potentially resolve this issue.

In that case it looks like a driver issue. Problem with Soundmax is that there seems to be different variants and many of them specifically for OEMs. You could try playing around with different drivers.

Last edited by stealthjoe on 2021-10-26, 15:01. Edited 1 time in total.

Intel 845GEBV2, Pentium 4 2.4 Ghz, Geforce FX5600 256MB, 512MB RAM, 160GB HDD, Sound Blaster Live! SB0100 - Win 98/XP

Reply 5 of 5, by zapbuzz

Posted on 2021-10-26, 14:58

zapbuzz Offline

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Location: Earth

i'm usually quite moot about onboard soundmax in 98 or 98se but these things are ancient and given the same part number for so many brands theres tons of drivers out there that are newer editions however for other models of motherboard bundled stuff.
Also Soundmax is best without its effects version the driver only versions are best under 9x and i think its possible to manually install sound driver without the install program wit hthe driver packages.
My soundmax is disabled for pci card audio too much hiss.
I also put the cpu driver from xp into 98se it actually supports speedstep better (cooler running p4 )

Lastly there is an HD audio patch for 98 98se i forgot the patch number.

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