1. What game(s) are you trying?
2. Do you get sound with native Windows applications like Media Player, WinAmp, etc.?
3. Are you using "Run with VDMSound"?
4. Do the games (or their setup programs) complain about "not detecting" the (emulated) hardware?

• The explanation for your problem could be:
• [this one's silly] volume turned down, etc.
• game you tried, in particular, hasn't sound [not very likely, but possible]
• you have giveio.sys or something like that on your system and VDMSound "loses" the control over the DOS box when you go in full-screen mode.

V.

thanks for reply

1: i tried police quest 3, monkey island, gateway, gateway2, king's quest 5, king's quest 6. (all of them works under win98 for me with sound and music, i also updated seirra's sound blaster driver) for police quest 3, the game will run with adlib selected, but no music, with sound blast, the game will freeze at the startup screen.
gateway or gateway2 no music at all.

2: ya, all other music works fine, games, mp3, and everything else.

3: ya, i did. i also tried that graphic interface lunchpad and tried different settings.

4: no, games don't complain.

explanation:
1: volume sure is up
2: games all have sound under win98.
3: what is giveio.sys? can i disable that?

also, more detail of my problem, the chip is a cmedia chip on my motherboard, i installed the lastest driver, but it doesn't have legacy sound support say for sound blast for me like my old sound blast 512 does under win98. in winxp there is no legacy support seems, and it doesn't provide any sound blaset pro emulation, but i don't think that it matters right? becuase VDMS suppose to be THE emulation right?
any other suggestion to get this work? anything that i can try?
also, if really no hope, i think of getting a new sound card, i just absolute have to play some of my old dos games, i am a sucker for graphic adven but there is really no new ga anymore. so what kind sound under winxp is sure going to work with VDMS? soundblast live 5.1? anything else? but first, i would like at least get this one to work so. thank you for hlep me.

vladr wrote:

V. […]
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1. What game(s) are you trying?
2. Do you get sound with native Windows applications like Media Player, WinAmp, etc.?
3. Are you using "Run with VDMSound"?
4. Do the games (or their setup programs) complain about "not detecting" the (emulated) hardware?

• The explanation for your problem could be:
• [this one's silly] volume turned down, etc.
• game you tried, in particular, hasn't sound [not very likely, but possible]
• you have giveio.sys or something like that on your system and VDMSound "loses" the control over the DOS box when you go in full-screen mode.

V.

i cleaned up my sound driver and reinstall it.
now, for kq6, with soundblast/adlib and soundblast selected, it will say something like can't initial audio device when i do "run with vdms".
and at pq3,it just freeze at start up screen, seems can't find audio device either, what could be the problem?

Unregistered wrote:

...the chip is a cmedia chip on my motherboard, i installed the lastest driver, but it doesn't have legacy sound support say for sound blast for me like my old sound blast 512 does under win98. in winxp there is no legacy support seems, and it doesn't provide any sound blaset pro emulation, but i don't think that it matters right?

Correct. You won't see legacy support under XP or any other NT-based OS because the OS won't allow your software to "talk" to your hardware without going through the OS first. By definition all DOS programs "hit the hardware" directly, so none of them can work the way they used to under DOS or Win9x.

... becuase VDMS suppose to be THE emulation right?

The answer depends on what you have. The short version is yes, that's true for Windows NT or 2000. The answer for XP is also yes, except that XP also has it's own "built-in" SoundBlaster emulation. So on XP you can use either one (sometimes, both).

any other suggestion to get this work? anything that i can try?

You really needed to give us a better description of your system and what was your problem. Your original statement: I got no sound no matter what i do. made it sound like your entire system was completely silent.

...i am a sucker for graphic adven but there is really no new ga anymore.

Not as common as they used to be, but they're out there.
http://www.justadventure.com/

... so what kind sound under winxp is sure going to work with VDMS?

Just about anything should be fine, but you should note that chipsets like the 8738 that depend on your main processor tend to have a harder time due the way they place a heavier workload on the processor. Soundblaster "Live" cards and the Phlips soundcards seem to be good performers.

1: i tried police quest 3, monkey island, gateway,...

All of them were the DOS versions?

3: ya, i did. i also tried that graphic interface lunchpad and tried different settings.

One thing to make sure of, is to perform a complete install for VDMSound.

That means installing version 2.04, then installing the "update" (you just copy the new files on top of the older VDMSound files), then running the GUI v1.0.0.7 install; making sure to follow the instructions along the way (logoff, etc...).

You should see two "Run with VDMSound" entries: one without a musical note, the other with the note.

what is giveio.sys? can i disable that?

It's used by some "monitor" tools, like the ones that can tell you what your motherboard temperature is, or how fast your cooling fan is running on your motherboard,etc...

They sometimes use giveio.sys to work, and that will conflict with VDMSound.

One thing I would recommend is to try these same games using XP's built-in emulation. It is inferior to VDMSound but it might help with troubleshooting your problem (IOW, if it's not working then you may actually have an OS problem).

The settings for XP's emulation is going to be a generic soundblaster, with an IRQ of 5, the 1st DMA will be 1, the second DMA (sometimes not used) will be 5.

So try re-configuring your games and see if they respond without using VDMSound (make sure that you don't use the VDMSound shortcuts when you do this.

thanks guys for helping me out.
i found the problem. it is that stupid hmonitor. even i am not using it for a long time, i just forget to uninstall it.
after i uninstall it, everything worked great. thanks again.

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