VOGONS


First post, by ultra_code

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Hello VOGONS,

Yesterday, I had the strong desire to play some Halo CE, in anticipation for the re-release of the game in the MCC on PC, and so, I installed the game under XP Pro 64-bit Edition on my i7-3770k machine (the first install of 64-bit XP I have ever done), and while the game runs perfectly, I noticed something when I went to the Audio settings menu, after I had forgot to enable EAX effects (the system has a Creative SoundBlaster X-fi Titanium Fata1ity PCIe sound card, meant just for older games that support EAX under XP). The EAX option was grayed out!

RZWWVOYl.png

I made sure that EAX was enabled in the sound card's driver menu, and by default it is. I have the latest driver for the card for XP x64:

1DKIffm.png

And, just to make sure Halo wasn't the only culprit, F.E.A.R. too has the same issue:

qojsIDpl.png

So, I'm confused as to what is happening. Are the Creative drivers kinda broke under x64 (doubt this myself)? Does EAX support only work under 32-bit OSes (I had no issue enabling EAX under 32-bit XP)? Is there some additional configuration I need to do to properly enable EAX support globally for all games, or do I have to do something on a per-game basis? I'd love to get this issue resolved, and hopefully get that slightly-better-than-stereo speaker experience whenever I boot up this rig once a month. 😜

Any help would be appreciated.

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Reply 1 of 15, by derSammler

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Windows XP x64 is actually Windows Server 2003 at its core and has not much in common with Windows XP x86, apart from the same GUI. The game(s) may simply not detect that they are running on an EAX-capable Windows XP (which - to some extent - is correct).

Reply 2 of 15, by ultra_code

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derSammler wrote on 2020-02-26, 20:17:

Windows XP x64 is actually Windows Server 2003 at its core and has not much in common with Windows XP x86, apart from the same GUI. The game(s) may simply not detect that they are running on an EAX-capable Windows XP (which - to some extent - is correct).

Yeah, I heard that XP x64 has a newer kernel than x86 XP. Still... would that really be enough to make games think there isn't EAX-capable hardware when there is?

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Reply 3 of 15, by cyclone3d

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I don't remember having this problem back when I was running XP x64 when it was current.

I would have probably had a Sound Blaster Audigy of some sort back then though.

Have you tried setting the games to run in compatibility mode?

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Reply 4 of 15, by ultra_code

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cyclone3d wrote on 2020-02-26, 22:57:

I don't remember having this problem back when I was running XP x64 when it was current.

I would have probably had a Sound Blaster Audigy of some sort back then though.

Have you tried setting the games to run in compatibility mode?

I've never thought of doing that before under XP with an XP game, but I attempted it, and nothing:

odQo515.png

Also, the longer I play Halo CE, the more buggy I find the game to be than I ever remembered it to be (then again, I only really remember playing it for real as a child, and the rest of the times it was the updated MCC edition on the Xbox One). And I patched it with the latest official patch - 1.0.10. I've limited the game to using one CPU thread to help, because I know older XP games look at a 4-core, 8-threaded CPU and not know how to best handle all of the resources it's give, but that only does so much.

I guess I could reinstall the sound card drivers, but I seriously doubt that would solve the issue. Reinstalling the game might help, but even if it did solve the problem, a) we wouldn't know what exactly caused it to begin with, and b) that would still leave F.E.A.R.'s identical issue in question.

Again, I'm confused.

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Reply 5 of 15, by swaaye

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https://danielkawakami.blogspot.com/2017/01/s … ack-62.html?m=1

There is no DirectSound hardware acceleration on Windows XP 64-bit (x64) with 4GB RAM or more […]
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There is no DirectSound hardware acceleration on Windows XP 64-bit (x64) with 4GB RAM or more

The Audigy driver does not support 64-bit addressing, disabling the DirectSound hardware acceleration and causing multichannel sound to be played only in the stereo channels (front left/right).

Workarounds:

- install the 32-bit (x86) version of Windows XP.
- limit to less than 4GB the amount of RAM available to Windows.
- enable the "Memory Hole" setting in the BIOS Setup, if your motherboard supports it.
- install and use Creative ALchemy to convert the DirectSound API calls into OpenAL, which is not affected by this issue.

I think that sums it up. I remember reading this at some point. So give those workarounds a try. Alchemy on XP! Heh.

I wonder if DSOAL works on XP x64.....

Reply 6 of 15, by DosFreak

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Have you tried modifying config.txt?
https://opencarnage.net/index.php?/topic/7383 … dated-05092019/

You can also try running the game with Dependency Walker to see if you are missing any files.

You can also try the EAX wrappers like Alchemy, DSOAL, indirectsound etc.
https://forums.ubisoft.com/showthread.php/225 … P-64-Bit-Forums

You can quickly test limiting the memory using msconfig

You can run through all the various driver versions, according to the below thread the modified driver worked to enable EAX on XP 64bit. Don't know if you can track that one down. If not them possibly a driver version later than the one you have may have fixed the issue:
https://web.archive.org/web/20080625113006/ht … php?t27037.html
https://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthrea … 369#post5299369

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Reply 7 of 15, by ultra_code

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DosFreak wrote on 2020-02-27, 02:27:
Have you tried modifying config.txt? https://opencarnage.net/index.php?/topic/7383 … dated-05092019/ […]
Show full quote

Have you tried modifying config.txt?
https://opencarnage.net/index.php?/topic/7383 … dated-05092019/

You can also try running the game with Dependency Walker to see if you are missing any files.

You can also try the EAX wrappers like Alchemy, DSOAL, indirectsound etc.
https://forums.ubisoft.com/showthread.php/225 … P-64-Bit-Forums

You can quickly test limiting the memory using msconfig

You can run through all the various driver versions, according to the below thread the modified driver worked to enable EAX on XP 64bit. Don't know if you can track that one down. If not them possibly a driver version later than the one you have may have fixed the issue:
https://web.archive.org/web/20080625113006/ht … php?t27037.html
https://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthrea … 369#post5299369

swaaye wrote on 2020-02-27, 02:17:
https://danielkawakami.blogspot.com/2017/01/s … ack-62.html?m=1 […]
Show full quote

https://danielkawakami.blogspot.com/2017/01/s … ack-62.html?m=1

There is no DirectSound hardware acceleration on Windows XP 64-bit (x64) with 4GB RAM or more […]
Show full quote

There is no DirectSound hardware acceleration on Windows XP 64-bit (x64) with 4GB RAM or more

The Audigy driver does not support 64-bit addressing, disabling the DirectSound hardware acceleration and causing multichannel sound to be played only in the stereo channels (front left/right).

Workarounds:

- install the 32-bit (x86) version of Windows XP.
- limit to less than 4GB the amount of RAM available to Windows.
- enable the "Memory Hole" setting in the BIOS Setup, if your motherboard supports it.
- install and use Creative ALchemy to convert the DirectSound API calls into OpenAL, which is not affected by this issue.

I think that sums it up. I remember reading this at some point. So give those workarounds a try. Alchemy on XP! Heh.

I wonder if DSOAL works on XP x64.....

Jesus, that's a lot of info to take in. Thank you guys so much! I think I'll be able to find a solution in all of that, especially that forum post page, but you are going to have to give me some time. I'll spend a good few hours on this on the weekend.

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Reply 8 of 15, by ultra_code

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So... I found the solution.

So, I first I went to see if my BIOS supported that "Memory Hole" feature, @swaaye, and in fact it did and was already enabled. Toggling it did nothing.

Then I added "support" for my GPU and sound card into the config.txt for Halo, as per the forum post's suggestion, @DosFreak. That... did nothing. It allowed for the game to properly name the GPU at least, but nothing else really.

Then I finished my first Legendary playthrough of the game. 😁

Then I tried dumping DSOAL's DLLs into the root directory of the game. Nothing. In fact, it essentially disabled sound for the game.

Then I tried installing different releases of Creative Alchemy. Nothing, as the installer complained it wanted Vista+.

Finally, I limited the memory XP could use to 4GB, which it then automatically so graciously rounded-down to 3.5GB, as that is the relative limit for the amount of system RAM 32-bit versions of Windows can handle.

kxxfrPV.png

And, that did the job surprisingly. No need to mess with anything else. Although, it's kinda sad that's what it takes for EAX to work. I would'a thought at this point, maybe someone came up with a patch to the Creative drivers to solve this issue at this point.

SNqWasIl.png

ePLFmT3l.png

@Cyclone3D, when you were running XP x64 "when it was current," how much RAM did you have in your machine? My guess is you had 4GB or less, no?

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Reply 9 of 15, by cyclone3d

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Yeah, I probably only had 4GB. That was a really long time ago.

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Reply 10 of 15, by DosFreak

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It would be nice if we could track down the modified drivers that allow EAX with >4GB of memory.

Until then instead of limiting the memory would EAX still work if a ram drive was used instead?
Then mabye could enable or disable as needed without a reboot.
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Reply 11 of 15, by mastergamma12

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Well, this explains why my Titanium Fatal1ty Champ (at the time) in my xp machine didn't want to work with eax on xp 64........

NNH9pIh.png

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Reply 12 of 15, by ultra_code

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mastergamma12 wrote on 2020-03-01, 23:47:

Well, this explains why my Titanium Fatal1ty Champ (at the time) in my xp machine didn't want to work with eax on xp 64........

The More You Know TM

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Reply 13 of 15, by mirh

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Reference for this behaviour
https://web.archive.org/web/20091022130117/ht … y/ms790402.aspx

Also interesting to note Windows 2000 64-bit lacks hardware acceleration, while Windows Server 2003 has it.
EDIT: docs may be wrong too though

Last edited by mirh on 2022-08-16, 11:29. Edited 2 times in total.

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Reply 14 of 15, by aaron158

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IMO ud be better off to just install x86 xp having more then the 3 some odd gigs x86 will let u have is pretty much pointless unless u get into games from 2007 or 8 and beyond and those games would run better under windows 7 anyway.

i would say games from 2002-3 upto 2007ish are perfect for xp x86 games beyond 2008 go windows 7 x64.

Reply 15 of 15, by Schule04

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mirh wrote on 2022-01-25, 21:24:

Reference for this behaviour
https://web.archive.org/web/20091022130117/ht … y/ms790402.aspx

Also interesting to note Windows 2000 64-bit lacks hardware acceleration, while Windows Server 2003 has it.

Not that surprising, Win2000 64bit is for Itanium only and lacks many other things as well IIRC