Sound Blaster Emulation causing Windows Protection Error

Question

I recently bought a Dell Latitude CSx H500XT from an online seller.  I intended mainly to use it to play older, DOS and early windows-based games.  I tried to play Doom on it, but there was no music.  then I discovered that you have to activate 'Sound Blaster Emulation.'  I did so and restarted the computer just as instructed, but when it came back up I got the message 'Windows Protection Error.  You need to restart your PC.'   I did so, several times, but I found in the end that the only way to stop the 'protection error' from happening is to go into Safe Mode and delete the hardware entry for Sound Blaster emulation, then boot up in normal mode and disable it.  So apparently the Sound Blaster emulation is what's causing the faults.   Anyone know what I can do to about this?  Thanks in advance.

Fuzzy8balls · Answer

Have you checked your device manager to see if there are any conflicts listed there? you might also try running the diagnostics on your system .From the Drivers and utilities CD that shoul dhave came with the system. Also, you could try updating your driver. You may also want to flash your bios.

These downlods can be found on our website. Support.Dell.com . Go to home and home office > put in service tag > Click little blue button > on next page choose os and language -- find downloads> on next page choose your audio, and also you should flash your bios. the diags can also be downloaded, but you would need a floppy drive with five blank floppys.

JamesEightBitSt · Answer

Yes, I have checked for device conflicts, and there is one--the Sound Blaster Emulation uses IRQ5, which is also used by the MagicMedia main drivers (win98 seems to detect the emulation as a seperate device altogether) and a PCI IRQ holder thing (I forget exactly what it's called).

I don't have a floppy drive, and my Laptop was used and thus didn't come with a driver disk. I had to reinstall using a normal Windows 98 disk and then download the MagicMedia drivers from the Dell website.

I'm new to Laptop,s so excuse me if this sounds ignorant, but is it possible to simply remove the MagicMedia sound device and replace it with an actual SoundBlaster? If so, I would imagine that this would be the best solution.

speedstep · Answer

WIN98 NON SE needs WIN95 drivers. If you install WIN98SE it uses DIFFERENT driver model than WIN98. Thats also why WIN98SE supports USB 2.0 and WIN98 does not.

JamesEightBitSt · Answer

Guys, I've tried everything, including downloading different drivers (I couldn't find any that said they were specifically for Windows 95, unless they also said they lacked the SB Emulation) and changing the resource settings for the Sound Blaster emulation. Sometimes they stop the Windows Protection Error, but at the same time something else goes wrong (changing the resource settings makes the Sound Blaster Emulation STILL not work, for example).

I'm guessing that I simply can't use this for playing DOS games. Not unless I want to play them in silence (which, well, if I wanted to do that, I wouldn't even HAVE a soundcard in the first place).

JamesEightBitSt · Answer

Sorry to revive an old thread, but there's been some developments in my situation which I hope will finally lead to a solution.

Today I messed around with my Laptop's Neomagic sound card some more to try and get that SB Emulation working without causing Windows Protection Errors. The problem seems to come down to that the Emulation uses IRQ 5, whcih is also used by the Neomagic Audio (which I expected, this is an extension of that audio after all) and an "IRQ Holder for PCI Steering."

So I tried disabling the Parellel Port so I could set the device on IRQ 7 (any higher than 7 is too high for most DOS-based games). Surprisingly, this worked... almost. After I restarted the computer, I ran two tests. First I tried Doom 95 (which for some reason, needs Sound Blaster emulation for music but plays sound effects such as gunshots just fine) and then Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold, which has a program for configuring the Sound Blaster. With Doom, nothing seemed different. With Blake Stone, it DID detect the card at IRQ 7, but when I actually TESTED it, the confirmation sound it played kept looping and the program gave me an error message saying I should check my IRQ and DMA settings. I tried changing the DMA settings, however I got the same results, and changing it back to IRQ 5 just caused the Windows Protection Errors to start up again.

So, the problem comes down to that if I turn on the SB Emulation, I get Windows Protection Errors. I've tried installing different drivers, sometimes even after removing the hardware profile. I even tried telling Windows to use actual Sound Blaster drivers in hopes of "fooling" the system. Again though, I'm stuck in a rut. Hopefully something I've said so far will jog some ideas.

EDIT: I forgot to mention. the first response I got mentioned that I should run a diagnostics program on the Setup CD. But the thing is, I got this Laptop used. It didn't come with a setup CD. I had to use a regular Windows 98 disc to install the OS. It also didn't come with a Floppy drive.

Message Edited by JamesEightBitStar on 07-13-2005 11:18 PM

Message Edited by JamesEightBitStar on 07-13-2005 11:21 PM

Locked Topics – Laptops General

Sound Blaster Emulation causing Windows Protection Error

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