If all the instability you've described has been happening when the SB card was installed, it could be broken and causing issues on the PCI bus

NeoG_ wrote on 2025-11-26, 21:22:

If all the instability you've described has been happening when the SB card was installed, it could be broken and causing issues on the PCI bus

Fingers crossed PCI slot 3 is fine. I've had it crash with slot 1 and 2 now. I think I popped it in 3 after the drivers and DirectX 9 had been installed and left it running. It didn't lockup. So hopefully, when I do a fresh install of DirectX and then the drivers, it'll be okay. Maybe.

Nope. Sadly, that fell through, too. 🙁 Same issue with PCI slots 1, 2 and 3. I don't have much hope for 4 and 5, to be honest.

Okay, so far so good. I'll probably type this too soon as usual. Put it into PCI slot 4, installed the Creative Information Utility, DirectX 9, and then the drivers. I did also check the box for it to remove any other Creative drivers, even though there aren't any, and it most likely wouldn't make any difference... No crash/freeze. Let it reboot, thinking it will probably crash then, but it didn't. Audio device is recognised, too. Going to leave it for a moment and see if it locks-up. So far it hasn't, so fingers crossed.

Yeah, was just about to move onto the next step, and it locked up. Forget it. I'm done. I can't be bothered anymore. I can't be bothered to even try slot 5. I've had enough. I'm going to try and sell this card on and get something else. Something from the mid-late 90s. Something that doesn't require modified drivers to work. And definitely not something that requires DirectX 9.

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-11-24, 23:42:

cyclone3d wrote on 2025-11-24, 23:27:

Yeah, or a paper towel. I'm not convinced that isopropyl will remove oxidation though. I generally always just use a rubber eraser.

I'm not sure how much oxidation there is, if any. I don't recall seeing any and I'm sure I would have noticed. I think it'll mostly be dusty. The CPU, mobo, and RAM were owned by someone who's a retro PC enthusiast, so I imagine they took care of the components. 😀

Unless the oxidation is super bad, you won't see it. If there is so much oxidation that you can see it, nothing would be working. Cleaning the contacts will make them nice and shiney.

cyclone3d wrote on 2025-11-27, 02:35:

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-11-24, 23:42:

cyclone3d wrote on 2025-11-24, 23:27:

Yeah, or a paper towel. I'm not convinced that isopropyl will remove oxidation though. I generally always just use a rubber eraser.

I'm not sure how much oxidation there is, if any. I don't recall seeing any and I'm sure I would have noticed. I think it'll mostly be dusty. The CPU, mobo, and RAM were owned by someone who's a retro PC enthusiast, so I imagine they took care of the components. 😀

Unless the oxidation is super bad, you won't see it. If there is so much oxidation that you can see it, nothing would be working. Cleaning the contacts will make them nice and shiney.

I just wouldn’t want to attempt to clean them only to break something. I’m usually very good at doing that. 😬😅

Two PCI cards I have purchased recently (X-Fi and Opti USB card) needed to be cleaned before they worked. I used electrical contact cleaner and a magic eraser on the fingers. I also like to follow up with isopropyl to get rid of any particles that the magic eraser leaves behind.

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-11-27, 01:23:

Yeah, was just about to move onto the next step, and it locked up. Forget it. I'm done. I can't be bothered anymore. I can't be bothered to even try slot 5. I've had enough. I'm going to try and sell this card on and get something else. Something from the mid-late 90s. Something that doesn't require modified drivers to work. And definitely not something that requires DirectX 9.

As a recall, one of the reasons why you started looking into modified drivers was because your card wasn't detected by the official Audigy 2 installation CD.

Normally, a retail (not OEM) SB0240 works fine with the drivers from the official disc under Win98SE. But since that wasn't the case with your particular card, it's possible that there's a hardware problem somewhere. Either with the card itself, or with your system.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-11-27, 05:25:

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-11-27, 01:23:

Yeah, was just about to move onto the next step, and it locked up. Forget it. I'm done. I can't be bothered anymore. I can't be bothered to even try slot 5. I've had enough. I'm going to try and sell this card on and get something else. Something from the mid-late 90s. Something that doesn't require modified drivers to work. And definitely not something that requires DirectX 9.

As a recall, one of the reasons why you started looking into modified drivers was because your card wasn't detected by the official Audigy 2 installation CD.

Normally, a retail (not OEM) SB0240 works fine with the drivers from the official disc under Win98SE. But since that wasn't the case with your particular card, it's possible that there's a hardware problem somewhere. Either with the card itself, or with your system.

I think I was able to get some official drivers working, though it took a while to find the right ones. I started playing with these modified ones in order to get DOS drivers working. What I don’t think I’ve tried doing though is installing the official drivers and then installing the DOS ones from the modified collection. Unless that’s not possible…?

I don’t recall any weird hang-ups prior to installing this card. With my ISA/Yamaha sound card, everything was perfectly fine.

Got my eye on a Sound Blaster Live Value CT4670 from 1998. Going to see if I can get this a bit later. Plus, it has the original box and driver CD. 😁

Yeah, I'm totally stumped as to what's wrong. Just tried the official drivers. Installed DirectX 8.1, which is included with the disc (image) and then ran the same utility. When I did this before with the official drivers, I don't recall any issues, but it's gone and done the same thing. Like the splash screen, the HDD will go idle. No LED blinks and nothing loads. Normally, after a good minute or two, it does, but this time, it's just locked up again. 🙁

Trying the sound card in my test build. Slightly different hardware, but more-or-less the same. First thing that happened after booting to the desktop - locked up. That was before any DirectX or drivers were installed. Also, the 98 splash screen came and went at the right speed the first time, but now it's taking ages like my main build. Could a faulty sound card cause that to happen...?

EDIT: Thought it was going to succeed. Installed DirectX 9 and it installed the drivers without a hitch, however, trying to reboot back to Windows - no chance. It gets stuck. Haven't even made it back to the desktop.

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-11-27, 16:46:

Also, the 98 splash screen came and went at the right speed the first time, but now it's taking ages like my main build. Could a faulty sound card cause that to happen...?

Probably could, if 98 is probing the PCI bus during boot and the card is interfering. At this point I think there is more than enough anecdotal reports to conclude that the card has a hardware issue, either bad contact or bad components

NeoG_ wrote on 2025-11-28, 13:32:

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-11-27, 16:46:

Also, the 98 splash screen came and went at the right speed the first time, but now it's taking ages like my main build. Could a faulty sound card cause that to happen...?

Probably could, if 98 is probing the PCI bus during boot and the card is interfering. At this point I think there is more than enough anecdotal reports to conclude that the card has a hardware issue, either bad contact or bad components

Definitely. And the final nail in the coffin - having the card out and putting my ISA card back in, Windows boots at the right speed again. It's a good job I bought the Sound Blaster Live! Value I mentioned yesterday.

Also, had a bit of a scare when I was setting up my ISA card again (the Yamaha). When testing, I don't tend to screw the brackets back in place. And I'd forgotten to plug the SC-55's DB15MIDI board into the back of it that I'd bought from Serdashop. Wiggling it into place caused the card to dislodge slightly and it emitted smoke from the ISA slot. D: I seriously thought I'd either fried the sound card, the motherboard, or the SC-55 port. It caused the machine to crash and I had to force it to shutdown by removing the plug. Surprisingly though, nothing was damaged. Everything still works.

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-11-28, 13:50:

Also, had a bit of a scare when I was setting up my ISA card again (the Yamaha). When testing, I don't tend to screw the brackets back in place. And I'd forgotten to plug the SC-55's DB15MIDI board into the back of it that I'd bought from Serdashop. Wiggling it into place caused the card to dislodge slightly and it emitted smoke from the ISA slot. D: I seriously thought I'd either fried the sound card, the motherboard, or the SC-55 port. It caused the machine to crash and I had to force it to shutdown by removing the plug. Surprisingly though, nothing was damaged. Everything still works.

Not sure if you know this, but most retro PC ports aren't hot swappable. Meaning, you're meant to turn the computer off before plugging anything in there. This goes for practically every port present on a retro rig, except for USB. Hot swapping even something minor like a PS2 mouse can damage the motherboard and/or the peripheral in question.

And you definitively do want to screw in the backplates. Not just for stability, but also to better ground the cards.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-11-28, 14:00:

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-11-28, 13:50:

Also, had a bit of a scare when I was setting up my ISA card again (the Yamaha). When testing, I don't tend to screw the brackets back in place. And I'd forgotten to plug the SC-55's DB15MIDI board into the back of it that I'd bought from Serdashop. Wiggling it into place caused the card to dislodge slightly and it emitted smoke from the ISA slot. D: I seriously thought I'd either fried the sound card, the motherboard, or the SC-55 port. It caused the machine to crash and I had to force it to shutdown by removing the plug. Surprisingly though, nothing was damaged. Everything still works.

Not sure if you know this, but most retro PC ports aren't hot swappable. Meaning, you're meant to turn the computer off before plugging anything in there. This goes for practically every port present on a retro rig, except for USB. Hot swapping even something minor like a PS2 mouse can damage the motherboard and/or the peripheral in question.

And you definitively do want to screw in the backplates. Not just for stability, but also to better ground the cards.

Ahhhh, okay. Makes sense. But no, I didn't know. If figured that could always been done. The more you know... ^^;

Even current computers can't do hot-swapping of expansion cards or other main components.

Swapping in / out cards like that with the system powered on is going to lead to fried components.

There are some setups where you have redundant hot-swappable power supplies.

SATA is supposed to be hot-swappable.

Most ports on the back of the computer should be hot swappable except for PS/2 and the older XT/AT keyboards.

Some specific cards would not have hot swappable ports but that is not going to be very often.

Edit: Also, hot swapping cards like (even if you get lucky and don't fry anything) is going to make the cards not work until after a hard power off and then back on. The BIOS has to detect stuff and configure it before it does anything else.

cyclone3d wrote on 2025-11-28, 17:39:

Even current computers can't do hot-swapping of expansion cards or other main components. […]
Show full quote

Even current computers can't do hot-swapping of expansion cards or other main components.

Swapping in / out cards like that with the system powered on is going to lead to fried components.

There are some setups where you have redundant hot-swappable power supplies.

SATA is supposed to be hot-swappable.

Most ports on the back of the computer should be hot swappable except for PS/2 and the older XT/AT keyboards.

Some specific cards would not have hot swappable ports but that is not going to be very often.

Edit: Also, hot swapping cards like (even if you get lucky and don't fry anything) is going to make the cards not work until after a hard power off and then back on. The BIOS has to detect stuff and configure it before it does anything else.

Expansion cards, I totally get. And I suppose this, that I tried to plug in, is an expansion card of sorts. Though because it can be plugged in like a VGA cable, it didn't occur to me that it could be a problem. PS/2 mice and keyboards I certainly didn't know. 😮 I've plugged and unplugged those, whilst the machine is running, for years. ^^;

Lesson learnt anyway. I'm going to be extra careful from now on.