There are specific things that must be done to get a Vortex2. First, ensure that you have installed your motherboard chipset drivers. If that doesn't help, change around the PCI slot that you're using; It tends to be picky.

Whenever you are posting a problem, post all of your system specifications.

The link below has a good explanation behind the differences between drivers.

https://www.philscomputerlab.com/aureal-vortex-2.html

I have never seen Windows say the drivers are incompatible. Maybe you are pointing Windows to the wrong directory of the extracted Aureal drivers. You need to point it to the Driver\Win9x\English directory for it to find the INF file properly. Although the Diamond install program should take care of everything so that's still strange...

Depending on your motherboard chipset, you may run into a error about the card being on the secondary PCI bus. If you see that you need an INF tweak.

2048 / 2050 have audio bugs. Use 2041 if you will be using DirectX 7.0a or older. If you must have DirectX 7.1/8/8.1/9, you should use Diamond's drivers (2017) or Aureal version <= 2015 because you will likely experience ddhelp crashes and system freezes otherwise.

It doesn't exactly say that they are incompatible. It just says that it didn't find any compatible drivers after I have pointed it to the correct folder with the files. Also if I use "have a disk" feature, it says that the drivers are not meant for this hardware or something similar.
in the driver package at vogonsdrivers (AU8830 9x 4.06.2048 driver) there is no english folder and all the inf files are in the win9x folder. Also the mx300 driver cd image that I burned has no english folder and there is just win9x folder that has version 1.02 drivers that are based on older 4.06.2017 version of aureal vortex drivers.
The system I want to have the sound card is Athlon64 system with asus A8V deluxe motherboard and 512Mb of ram and the other system I tried the sound card and win98se with was Celeron 633Mhz system with asus CUV4X motherboard and 320Mb of ram.

I wish I knew how that win98se driver installation exactly works and how it checks if a driver matches with the hardware, so perhaps there would be some way to check what kind of information the sound card is actually telling windows. Perhaps I could change the inf file to match that.

Hi Baoran,

I just reinstalled my MX 300 today with the 1.02 Diamond drivers, and this is how it went:

1. Uninstall any previous Aureal drivers from Add/Remvove programs. If there is no entry, remove it using Device Manager.
2. Restart your PC. When the "Found new hardware" - "Audio device" dialog comes up, cancel it. You should now be at your desktop.
3. Run the 1.02 Diamond drivers setup: 102rel.exe. This program will install the driver to your TEMP folder. When asked to reboot, do so.
4. Now, when the "Found new hardware" - "Audio device" comes up, point it to C:\Windows\Temp.
Like swaaye said, you might get an error message, but you can ignore it.

Hope that helps.

Regards

Baoran wrote:

It doesn't exactly say that they are incompatible. It just says that it didn't find any compatible drivers after I have pointed […]
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It doesn't exactly say that they are incompatible. It just says that it didn't find any compatible drivers after I have pointed it to the correct folder with the files. Also if I use "have a disk" feature, it says that the drivers are not meant for this hardware or something similar.
in the driver package at vogonsdrivers (AU8830 9x 4.06.2048 driver) there is no english folder and all the inf files are in the win9x folder. Also the mx300 driver cd image that I burned has no english folder and there is just win9x folder that has version 1.02 drivers that are based on older 4.06.2017 version of aureal vortex drivers.
The system I want to have the sound card is Athlon64 system with asus A8V deluxe motherboard and 512Mb of ram and the other system I tried the sound card and win98se with was Celeron 633Mhz system with asus CUV4X motherboard and 320Mb of ram.

I wish I knew how that win98se driver installation exactly works and how it checks if a driver matches with the hardware, so perhaps there would be some way to check what kind of information the sound card is actually telling windows. Perhaps I could change the inf file to match that.

It looks like 2048 and 2041 have a different directory structure. And yeah the Diamond drivers are quite different. You really should not bother with 2048. It has bugs like reversed channels in some games.

I suspect you're running into problems with the new chipsets combined with the quirks of Win9x and those Aureal drivers. XP does "just work", but the Aureal drivers for XP are basically useless for 3D audio unfortunately. Aureal never fully completed a Win2K or XP driver. Though frankly they never really completed a Win9x driver either. 🤣 Buggy buggy drivers.

You may be able to find info about Vortex 2 on an Apollo Pro 133A board. It's possible you need some driver INF tweaks to make it work. The Athlon64 is probably going to be more difficult to figure out. The Diamond driver may not be an option with such new chipsets.

I will be able to continue testing it again on tuesday and check if I can do something to make it work. Thank you all for your advice and let me know if you can think of anything else I could try.

I tried installing drivers the way eeJay said today. They seem to install, but when I try to open the monster sound control panel, I just get errors like can't initialize drivers and such.

Do you have any other PCI cards in use? Try to just run the MX300 and a video card. Sometimes PCI cards don't get along in Win9x and strange things happen. Though usually it means freezes and BSODs.

You could also try getting another Vortex 2 to try. The Turtle Beach Montego II is usually fairly easily found because they were in Dell machines. Just search for Turtle Beach PCI cards. Maybe your MX300 isn't working correctly in some way. Be careful not to buy the original Montego with AU8820 though. They are very similar cards.

Or perhaps you could dig up a 440LX/BX/ZX/EX motherboard to try the MX300 on. That's a bulletproof platform for the Aureal chips. If it doesn't work on one of those boards then there's something wrong with it.

Isn't old hardware and software fun? 🤣

No other cards, just Geforce 7800gs agp graphics card and mx300 in Asus A8V deluxe motherboard.
au30dos driver seems to be working even though volume was quite low in commander keen 4 when I tried it.
That is the one thing I am trying to find out if the card is really broken or not and if I should try to ask my money back for it.