Would the HD settings really mater if it is choking on MIDI? Still, seeing what settings are in the BIOS may lead to something.

Collector since we are already in the twilight zone (unplugging the speakers makes Dosbox work - wtf?) anything might help

As for the Realtek manager it should be a control panel app according to http://www.mslinn.com/sites/mike/computers/ga … lery/audio.html

I don't know why but the Realtek Manager didn't install with the driver, I was looking on ways to getting it back, since I'm begging to think the day it went away might have been the day it DOSBox started giving me trouble, but I can't really find anything.

What's really strange is that taking out the mididevice in the config files works for DOSBox, but not for GOG or Steam games. In the event log it's still pointing to "wdmaud.drv" as the culprit.

Why would this error still appear if I've disabled the midi device?

The GOG and Steam games most likely use two config files, one for general settings and one for game settings. The last one trumps the first one.
I think the config files are per game somewhere. In the case of Ultima 7, the master config is at C:\GOG Games\Ultima VII - Complete\Ultima7\dosboxULTIMA7.conf and for the game the additional config is dosboxULTIMA7_single.conf (same path). And this is with the new U7 GOG installer, no idea what the old one did. Long story short, take a look at which config files get loaded and change all that have the mididevice setting.

You really need the Realtek Manager it seems 😀

so when you open up Control panel and search for Realtek it is not appearing? Definitely?

Oh, apparently it was there from the latest install this morning, but I didn't notice it until now. It's really different from what I remember, but what should I do with it?

I don't know, try different settings 😀

Try reducing the audio sampling rate for the audio device (Realtek).

Hmm, messing around with the Realtek manager didn't do a thing and that includes reducing the sampling rate as for the additional GOG file, the one in the game I tried seemed to simply be the equivalent of an "Autoexec.bat".

Try the dosbox version posted here: DOSBox and MIDI music. It will bypass the Microsoft MIDI device. Follow the instructions there to install a soundfont, too. That's the only test I can think of to bypass the built-in MIDI (in Windows 7). Otherwise, you will not know.

Hmm, I ran the GUTest file in GS Fluidsynth thing and midi test files and they all crash the media player. Did I miss a step?