Big problems caused by new sound card.

[ecryptic]

I just bought a Pine PS-M01A C-Media Cmi8738 6 channel sound card.
I could not find drivers for Windows XP, but I found some for NT and 2000.
When running the install application, it will show a little bubble on the bottom right saying "Gameport", and then right after that, the system will restart suddenly, not allowing the installation to complete.
When restarting, it may or may not do the same thing as when I first installed the card. It may say new hardware has been found, or it may not.

Now, in device manager three things are flagged. Microsoft Kernel DLS Synthesizer. MPU-401 Compatible MIDI Device. Multimedia Audio Controller.
When trying to update the drive for either three it comes up with a bubble in the bottom right saying the following.

Title: "Windows = Delayed Write Failed"
Text: "Windows was unable to save all the data for the file \Windows\System32\SET84.tmp. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file elsewhere."
Or instead, it will say this "\Windows\System32\SETSD.tmp" or "SETSB.tmp" etc.

The install window will say:
Cannot Install this Hardware There was a problem installing the hardware:
CMI8738 PCI Audio Device
An error occurred during the installation of the device
The I/O operation has been aborted because of either a thread exit or an application request.

Before, when I tried it last time, instead of doing this it would ask the Address and Interrupt, and no matter what address or interrupt I entered it would say it had an error. And if I cancelled it, it would say it finished successfully, but of course, not work when I restart.

Of course, I was using onboard sound, so I had to disable in the bios setup.

After loading windows, I get this error:
Windows - Corrupt file.
The file or directory \Windows\System32\drivers\portcls.sys is corrupt and unreadable.
Please run the chkdsk utility.
And I did run the check disk utility last time I recieved this, and it didn't help that time.

It gives me the same problem when I try and update any driver for anything.
I can't seem to get my old onboard sound back either now.
I guess the sound card corrupted the driver files, because I *never* had a problem like this before.

[frank5]

Sounds like an irq conflict with your midi port. I didn't see which os your using but look at your irq distribution, See if you can change the irq to your midi port in the bios to one that is not being used. . You may want to try to disable your midi port in bios if you you can't free up an irq for it.
You may also want to try your sound card in a different slot which may change the recources the card takes up and may eliminate a conflict if one exists.

[ecryptic]

Okay, I'll try and make this short...
I booted from the Windows XP CD and did a repair of Windows XP, and tried again..
It restarts when installing the 2000 driver.
I *did* get the NT4 drivers to work after trying two or three times.
Windows XP downloaded an update for the driver automatically. I say what the heck, and tell it to go ahead and install them. Then, it comes up with an alert "cmpci Driver Alert" "The cmpci Driver cannot be removed because of a registry access problem.". I click ok, and the window pops up three more times, one after another after clicking on OK.
So I restart and it doesn't work, so I go back to the NT4 drivers, it don't ask to update it again.
The sound is crappy and distorted, the bass is distorted, and normal sounds sound really high pitch, although the music didn't sound too bad.
I didn't get a chance to see if the other channels would work, but if they did, it would only be when playing a DVD for example...
Plus, when I started up my system, windows would freeze after loading startup programs, if I try and Alt Ctrl Delete it won't do it, it won't do much at all, except let me use already loaded programs, not load new ones though.
So I took the sound card out and had none of those problems. So now I am back to using onboard sound, which I have to say, too many people underate.
Some onboard sound cards are better than normal ones when it comes to acceleration.. Anyway..
I might try to use the sound card again later... Does anyone know where to get the "updated" drivers directly from Microsoft?
It might have downloaded the 2000 ones. :(