Sound card mayhem!!!

[fletch2g]

Hello...im havin problems getting my Aztech pci 338 sound card installed. Just recently i scored myself an Athlon 550, Biostar mobo, and a 10 gig Western Digital. I installed windows and all my hardware/software and everything was running perfect. Then, last night i realized that my sound card had newer drivers than the ones i was using...so i downloaded them. Before I installed them...i uninstalled my old sound card drivers exactly as the read me file said...(1..remove the multifunction adapter in device manager..next I went into the Control Panel, "Add/Remove Programs" and removed the demo Application and then PCI 338-A3D Audio.) So now i reboot and install the new drivers for the card. Everything works perfect during that windows session but when i reboot all hell breaks loose. Once the windows splash screen gets about half way through loading...I get this error message:

"Dos/16M error (36) Dos 16M windows driver was never loaded"

Then my computer automaticly shuts off. When I boot up again, it freezes during the windows splash screen. Now i reboot and go into safe mode only too find no conflicts in device manager. I ran scandisk and sys file checker but no problems arise. So i uninstall the card again the same way and when i reboot and install again everythings cool. I reboot yet another time just to get the error and begin my vicious cycle. I thought it was the new drivers but the original ones do the same. Keep in mind that it ran perfect before i decided to update the drivers. I had used these "newer" drivers on my old system without any problems. I was just goin to reformat again but i spent the last week recovering from my last one. I dont feel like setting everything up again..
Any ideas are extremely appreciated...

[CMonster]

Okay, I'm stumped. And you say the new drivers worked on your old system? I fear you may have removed something during the uninstall that was not supposed to be removed. It sounds like some system file is telling a program to run that requires "Dos 16M" to be loaded first - whatever the heck Dos16M is anyway - sounds like it's time for a trip to the M$ website. Socalgal is always good at finding these obscure files..

socalgal??

Try doing a manual search for Dos 16M in your system files - if the file has anything to do with a sound card the chances are that it could possibly be related to the card functioning in DOS mode. I would check autoexec.bat and config.sys to see if there are any references to DOS level sound drivers and I would remove them.

I just loathe this kind of problem - sometimes the healthiest thing to do is to pull the plug.

BTW, conflicts do not show in the Device Manager when in safe mode. Did you try removing the card from the DM while in safe mode? Did you know that a simple DMA conflict can keep you from booting?


[This message has been edited by CMonster (edited 12-13-1999).]

[fletch2g]

Just some more info......i did virus scan the files and even reinstalled windows......but no go......

[CMonster]

One more thing, if you can get into safe mode it must be something in your drivers - some kind of resource conflict. You may want to try uninstalling the sound card, modem, Network card/etc from the Device Manager and physically from the machine. If Windows boots in normal mode then you can install one thing at a time.

Best of luck.

[fletch2g]

Thanx for the help......um i cant find anything about dos16m in my sys files. I ran msconfig and unchecked this line from autoexec.bat:

Set blaster=A220 12 D3 T4

Then i rebooted but it still shows this line right before the desktop. I tried installin the card anyway but still no luk.
I will try to reinstall all the cards tomorrow and be bak here with the results....thanx a million.......

[fletch2g]

I uninstalled all my cards and then reinstalled them one at a time..problem still exists. Im prolly just goin to reformat in a couple of hours if i get no further suggestions....Thanks again Cmonster.....

[fletch2g]

Im back.......Um.....I reformatted and reinstalled everything. It was running flawless. Then...one day, i noticed Quake 3 wouldnt use A3d for some reason. Ive read in another post that I needed to update my sound card drivers from A3D directly,,,not from my cards maker. So I tried them and they wouldnt load at all. I decided i didnt care and reinstalled the old drivers......and you know what...My problem has started again. Windows wont boot with my sound card installed. but it does fined without it. Im goin to try a new card but till then Im still looking for advice....What really makes me mad is that right after i reformat windows loads all the drivers fine and everything runs great, but if i ever need to remove the sound card to update the drivers, it starts this problem. Any other advice?

[Axel]

I've got a parameter set in my laptop's autoexec.bat file:

set dos16m=2

it's right after the norton AV start-up line.

Not sure exactly what it's for, but it seems to be something which evokes a dos mode for dos drivers.

Laptop is an HP Omnibook 4150

Only other item above it in execution is the load of banyan vines protocols, below it the temp files get set.

nothing in config.sys
nothing about it in the help files
haven't searched the MS site for anything on it - you might try looking there if you have the time.

[Axel]

Here ya go - check out this link - the dos16m is an environment variable -
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q77/8/50.asp

It looks like a quick fix for different chip-sets having to do with interrupt variables.