mln wrote on 2023-11-07, 20:17:

For anyone interested, I got SB0240 working using this guide on Asus P6X58D-E (X58 chipset) with 98SE.
DOS mode works fine as well.

Nice! Thanks for sharing this info!

I myself was able to install DOS and Win9x drivers on the (slightly older) P35 chipset and it worked fine there too.

GL1zdA wrote on 2023-11-07, 22:54:

The tools can usually be mixed and matched between CDs. I've recently worked a bit on a custom DanielK support pack for my X-Fi and it was relatively ease to add or update some tools as long as they've used the same "setup framework" (Creative changed this during the cards livetime). You can even download updates for the tools and unpack them and some will work without problems (no all unfortunately). I assume you can cook a similar CD for the Audigy, with all the versions you found working best on Windows 98.

Yup, that's what I ended up doing for version 3.0 of the guide. 😀

Update: SqallStrife kindly set up a Vogons Drivers account for me, so the modified driver image is now hosted there.

I can't seem to get the Setup rolling on Windows 98 with my SB0240. I've burned driver CD for the "Audigy" and the "Audigy 2ZS". Having the Audigy2 SB0240 I figured one of these would work but alas. My goal is to get SB16 Emulation in device manager as the Live! card I have is a Dell OEM and does not support it.

My set-up:

Pentium ii 450MHz Deschutes
Asus P2B-S w/ latest BIOS
512MB RAM
Creative Labs 3D Annihilator Pro (GeForce 256 DDR)
Seagate 40GB PATA
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 SB0240
3Com 3C905C-TX-M

I've tried switching the soundcard to the first PCI slot and reinstalling a bunch of times. First VDX only, then WDM -> VDX. Weirdly enough everytime I uninstall in an attempt to reinstall I get the message during startup that files are missing when installing the new PCI device/Creative Audigy Audio Processor (WDM). I have to manually path these files:

• C:\Windows\Catroot\wdma_emu.cat
• C:\Windows\System\mmdevldr.vxd
• F:\Audio\Drivers\Common\A3d.dll
• F:\Audio\Drivers\Win2k_Xp\ctaud2k.sys

After doing so I still have some parts of the Audigy undetected in Device Manager. But no matter if I install or skip installation of the drivers I always get this message from both Audigy Driver CD's:

"Setup could not detect any Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS in your system

Please ensure that your Sound Blaster hardware is peroperly installed before running this Setup program

Setup will now exit."

This is strange since the Audigy has been present in device manager without the question mark. I can find only little troubleshooting about this issue online and I really want to install it this way since all the proper guides have this instruction.

Could it be as simple as getting specifically "Audigy 2 (non-ZS)" driver CD instead of the two I've tried? Those have both been documented to work for Win 98 SE for the SB0240 I have. I can get the sound in Windows to work just fine, but it will never detect SB 16 Emulation as the ctzapxx.exe installer on the \Audio\Drivers folder of both CD's will install either WDM/VXD drivers but never seem to pick up the SB16.inf file that I suppose takes care of the SB16 Emulation in device manager.

Help me!

Update

Nevermind, burned the 2 non-ZS driver CD and still got this:

"Setup could not detect any Sound Blaster Audigy in your system

Please ensure that your Sound Blaster hardware is peroperly installed before running this Setup program

Setup will now exit."

What the hell! How do I install from this CD 😖

According to the sb16.inf the following registries are added when "bringing up SB16 Emulation driver":

HKR,,Driver,0,ctsb16.vxd
HKR,,DevLoader,0,mmdevldr.vxd

Curiously though these DLL's are both present in C:\Windows\System but the device is not added in device manager thus I can't configure the address etc. What can I do to resolve this?

PleaseHelpMeAdmin wrote on 2023-12-18, 23:55:

I can't seem to get the Setup rolling on Windows 98 with my SB0240. I've burned driver CD for the "Audigy" and the "Audigy 2ZS".

I'm not sure I understand what you're doing.

Did you download the retail Audigy 2 driver CD image and attempt to install that? Or did you use my modified image and follow the steps from the first post in this guide?

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-12-19, 00:16:

PleaseHelpMeAdmin wrote on 2023-12-18, 23:55:

I can't seem to get the Setup rolling on Windows 98 with my SB0240. I've burned driver CD for the "Audigy" and the "Audigy 2ZS".

I'm not sure I understand what you're doing.

Did you download the retail Audigy 2 driver CD image and attempt to install that? Or did you use my modified image and follow the steps from the first post in this guide?

I did both. Firstly I tried a random Audigy image on archive.org someone referred to on Vogons (Audigy 1), then I burned the one from the Guide which was had the UI for Audigy 2ZS and finally I tried the one for Audigy 2 (non-ZS) but they all tell me there is no Sound Blaster device found. How can this be? I switched to the primary PCI slot and there is no on-board sound to disable. Device manager and Everest seem to recognize the card just fine and it works like a charm in Windows. But without the SB16 Emulation.

PleaseHelpMeAdmin wrote on 2023-12-19, 00:29:

Device manager and Everest seem to recognize the card just fine and it works like a charm in Windows. But without the SB16 Emulation.

I can only speculate, but it's possible that either:

a) your system got broken by all the different driver installation attempts, in which case a clean install might help
b) there aren't enough free resources (IRQs DMA) on your system to install the SB16 emulation device
c) you might have an OEM card which doesn't work with Creative's drivers

I would suggest doing a clean install of Win98SE and following the guide as closely as possible. Be sure to check if you have enough free resources beforehand, as described in section 1. of the guide.

To give you an idea of my current state.

This is the error the setup throws me. All 3 discs.

This is an overview of the sb16.inf, my current sysinfo regarding the devices installed related to the soundcard, the SB16 related files in my System folder and a tiny bit of my device manager where the SB16 is absent. I also noticed that ctsb16.vxd which is the actual driver for this device is absent in my registry other than recently viewed files.

My assesment: I feel this needs to be able to be resolved without a reinstall and throwing away 20 hours of work. I can't get the disc setup through somehow due to unknown error. A manual install is possible from X:\Audio\Drivers\ctzapxx.exe (the one where you select WDM/VXD/NT driver (un)installation) but this one perhaps looks at the wrong folder from 98se_me, nt40 or win2k_xp or somehow brushes over the sb16.inf in the 98se_me subfolder. Not sure why but I like to know how I can manually add that device and install that driver.

Nvm I misread. Thought I was supposed to install by CD at step 2 but I wasn't. Going through the other steps now.

Fuck me it finally works. Lost about 10 hours of my life on the misreading and focussing on the wrong shit lmao

Nice that you were able to work things out.

I've edited the guide to put a bit more emphasis on canceling the autorun installer.

At least I learned a lot about the structure of how Windows 98 functions. It's been 20 years since I actively used it and started a career in IT growing up so I reckon I ought to know enough to recognize your steps and troubleshooting from A to B. Thanks for the update and the work you've put into this guide.

I just wanted to pass on my thanks for this guide. I have an Audigy 2 ZS (Model #: SB0350). The first time I installed drivers for this card I did it the conventional (read: cumbersome) way and I only stumbled upon this guide when I had no sound in DOS. Glad I did!

I've used the older version of this guide in a couple of test systems and then finally in my main windows 98 system, and it's a much cleaner and more streamlined install! I've also just now used version 3.0 in Windows ME on the exact same card, and that went flawlessly. I plan to use version 3.0 of the Soundblaster live! guide in an upcoming build too.

Below are some observations and questions from my experience using this card with VXD drivers in windows 98 and ME, mostly relating to CD-Audio, which seems to give me the most headaches:
1) 'analog' CD Audio works on the VXD drivers when using a virtual optical drive via Daemon tools (I'm using v3.44), so long as the optical drive letter is set to D (or it just has to be the optical drive with the lowest letter). This surprised me as I thought the reason I couldn't get it working previously is because it only worked with WDM drivers! I wish I'd known that earlier, but I guess it pays to try every combination.

On that note, I can't seem to get CD audio working on both a virtual optical drive and a real optical drive - it seems to be one or the other. Is that others' experience too? Am I missing something obvious? I have a couple of work arounds for it that I can live with (separate HDDs with different configurations, changing the drive letter manually) but it would be awesome if I could get both working seamlessly without having to manually switch things.

2) The lack of SPDIF output on the 2 ZS noted earlier in this thread is ever so slightly annoying. While I can live with analog audio (and probably wouldn't notice the difference anyway) the fact that I can't do it just bugs me a little. I understand this isn't an issue with the Audigy 2. Is there a noticeable difference in sound quality between the Audigy 2 and the 2 ZS? I'm wondering if it's worth swapping to an Audigy 2?

3) I can confirm digital audio crackling in some DOS games as others have experienced. For me it's Mechwarrior 2 (DOS edition, I also have the Windows 'pentium' edition, which has no audio issues) and Dungeon Keeper. In both cases, the crackling occurs when the digital audio plays simultaneously with CD-Audio. I haven't noticed issues when the CD-Audio isn't working, but I could probably test this a little more. I haven't had any issues with Quake like others have reported, but I mainly use GLQuake so I wonder if that' makes a difference?

Anyway, some passing thoughts. Thanks again for the great and thorough guide Joseph_Joestar!

Martli wrote on 2024-01-04, 00:51:

1) 'analog' CD Audio works on the VXD drivers when using a virtual optical drive via Daemon tools (I'm using v3.44), so long as the optical drive letter is set to D (or it just has to be the optical drive with the lowest letter). This surprised me as I thought the reason I couldn't get it working previously is because it only worked with WDM drivers! I wish I'd known that earlier, but I guess it pays to try every combination.

Yeah, getting CD audio to work via Daemon Tools (and similar virtual drive software) is a gamble when VxD drivers are used. As you say, the best approach is to manually assign the letter D: to the virtual drive. But even so, some titles will refuse to play CD audio if a physical CD/DVD drive is detected as well. It seems to vary from game to game.

2) The lack of SPDIF output on the 2 ZS noted earlier in this thread is ever so slightly annoying. While I can live with analog audio (and probably wouldn't notice the difference anyway) the fact that I can't do it just bugs me a little. I understand this isn't an issue with the Audigy 2. Is there a noticeable difference in sound quality between the Audigy 2 and the 2 ZS? I'm wondering if it's worth swapping to an Audigy 2?

The ZS has slightly better SNR compared to the regular Audigy 2, but you likely won't notice the difference unless you're using very high quality speakers/headphones. The missing CD Digital volume slider appears to be a hardcoded issue, and is only present on ZS cards. Regular Audigy 2, Audigy 1 and SBLive cards don't have that problem.

Anyway, some passing thoughts. Thanks again for the great and thorough guide Joseph_Joestar!

You're welcome! 😀

Thank you Joseph_Joestar so much for writing this guide! I've been trying to get my Audigy 2 ZS set up on my current Pentium 4 build for the past few days. This guide has helped out tremendously, especially bypassing the normal Creative Labs install with all of its bloat.

A couple questions:

1) How necessary is it to install 7-Zip? It doesn't seem like it's required for anything that I can see?

2) How necessary are the various Creative Utilities? I've yet to install any of them (just the basic drivers for now) and I'm curious to know what the consequences of not installing certain utilities are.

One of the Creative utilities is needed for the SoundFont software, I believe. I think it's the system info utility or something.

You don't need 7-zip. This is probably just for extracting archives, and I always use WinRAR for that.

I did install the Creative System Information utility.

I basically did Step 3 and Step 5. I skipped all the utilities installs in Step 4 (for now).

That's what I did. Minimal driver install with SoundFont utility.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-03-03, 03:41:

1) How necessary is it to install 7-Zip? It doesn't seem like it's required for anything that I can see?

Good catch. It's a leftover from the previous version of the guide, which required you to manually unpack an ISO image and extract the contents of a CAB file. Not needed anymore.

2) How necessary are the various Creative Utilities? I've yet to install any of them (just the basic drivers for now) and I'm curious to know what the consequences of not installing certain utilities are.

Creative System Information is necessary for proper driver installation. None of the other utilities will work without it. The SoundFont Bank Manager is needed for loading soundfonts into memory. Additionally, you need the EAX Console to manage EAX settings and turn CMSS on/off. Likewise, you need the Creative Speaker Settings to properly configure the card for using 5.1 speakers or headphones (the Windows Control Panel applet is not enough).

The rest are optional, but still useful under certain circumstances. AudioHQ is needed if you want to change the Digital Out (SPDIF) sampling rate. The Surround Mixer is good for precisely managing input volume when recording audio. Lastly, the Restore Defaults utility does just that, and is nice to have if your settings get messed up for whatever reason.

And in case anyone's curious, here's what Creative states about VxD vs. WDM drivers with regards to the Audigy 2 ZS:

Creative's Driver Utility Program wrote:

This utility allows Windows 98SE users to change their driver installation between VXD and WDM driver sets. By default, this pro […]
Show full quote

This utility allows Windows 98SE users to change their driver installation between VXD and WDM driver sets.
By default, this product is installed with WDM drivers which are optimized for Windows Me, 2000 and XP.

Recommendations
The WDM driver is recommended for Windows 98se users who primarily use their computer for digital music applications
such as DVD Audio, MP3/WMA playback or MIDI.

The VXD driver is recommended for Windows 98se users who primarily use their computer to play games. For additional details regarding VXD and WDM drivers, please read the following:

Benefits of using VXD Drivers in Windows® 98SE

1. Increased stability and performance with DirectSound and EAX enhanced technology applications (like games) in
   Windows 98SE.
2. Ability to play multiple MIDI devices simultaneously, a feature not available with the WDM architecture in this
   operating system.
3. Earlier versions of Windows Media Player (mplayer.exe) can playback Multi-channel files (more than 2-channel
   stereo). These same versions of Mplayer.exe only support 2-channel stereo output when using WDM format drivers.

Benefits of using WDM Drivers in Windows® 98SE

1. Support for Microsoft’s Digital Rights Management, a feature not available with the VXD architecture.
2. Kernel Streaming supported in Cakewalk SONAR, a feature not available with the VXD architecture.
3. Support multi-channel WAVE playback through DirectSound when using later versions of Windows Media Player
   (mplayer2.exe).
4. Support for Direct Music.

Known issues when using VXD Drivers in Windows® 98SE

1. Some games (like Final Fantasy VII) may use the DirectMusic interface which is not supported in the VXD
   architecture. As an alternative, you can select another music synth, like Synth A or B provided with Sound
   Blaster products.
2. Speaker test feature under Creative Speaker Settings will not work with the VXD architecture.
3. This product cannot stream out AC-3 audio for internal or external decoding with the VXD architecture.
4. An error message may appear when attempting to restore previous audio settings in Creative applications with
   the VXD architecture.
5. DVD Audio (DVD-A) playback is not available with the VXD architecture.

This was taken straight from Creative's Driver Utility Program, which is the official method for swapping between WDM and VxD drivers. In addition to what is mentioned above, I have personally noticed a few issues with EAX when WDM drivers are used. For example, Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 are missing some occlusion effects with WDM drivers. Similarly, Need for Speed III incorrectly processes EAX in tunnels when WDM drivers are used. This is why my guide is based on VxD drivers.

Lastly, I spotted a few additional WDM vs. VxD differences. As I've mentioned elsewhere, the "CD Digital" volume slider is only available on Audigy 2 ZS cards when WDM drivers are used. Also, the AudioHQ panel has more options if WDM drivers are used:

The extra options are mostly related to Dolby/DTS decoding and SPDIF passthrough. I find the WDM requirement for decoding odd, since Creative made those options available with VxD drivers on their previous cards, like the Audigy 1, Audigy 2 (non-ZS) and the SBLive.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2024-03-03, 05:09:

Creative System Information is necessary for proper driver installation. None of the other utilities will work without it. The SoundFont Bank Manager is needed for loading soundfonts into memory. Additionally, you need the EAX Console to manage EAX settings and turn CMSS on/off. Likewise, you need the Creative Speaker Settings to properly configure the card for using 5.1 speakers or headphones (the Windows Control Panel applet is not enough).

The rest are optional, but still useful under certain circumstances. AudioHQ is needed if you want to change the Digital Out (SPDIF) sampling rate. The Surround Mixer is good for precisely managing input volume when recording audio. Lastly, the Restore Defaults utility does just that, and is nice to have if your settings get messed up for whatever reason.

Good to know, thank you!

I'll probably just install the SoundFont manager, EAX Console and maybe the Speaker Settings to start.