Win95 Troubles

[Alaron]

Ive been working on this old Dell Optiplex for a long time and its still not in perfect working order. My original problem was the hard drive, but I've fixed that. I have a new 4gig Seagate Medalist drive and I installed Windows 95 on it with the cdrom. The installation went perfectly fine; fdisk, format, install.

When I power up the computer, Windows recognizes the Sound Card I put in the computer. Its a no name brand card but it does work. It comes up with the "Found new hardware" wizard and wants me to install it. However, when I attempt to install, Windows asks for disks. It says that "X.cab, X.dll cannot be found on the cdrom, please insert Disk11" Depending on the file it cannot find, it asks for either Disk11,Disk12 or Disk5. I installed Windows with the CDROM, so I have no idea what disks its asking for.

Also,

I tried to install the sound card using the CDROM included with the card. It hung at 50% installed. I retried it and I got the same hang. I went into the device manager and it shows and recongnizes the card, except for "Joystick adapter". I thought ok, it sees it so I should get sound. I used the sounds in windows (the startup sound in the control panel) to test the sound. Im using a small 2 speaker set. I can hear the sound but it is extremely faint. I get the same result with a music CD. I have yet to install "Volume Control" from the Windows disc, so I thought once that was installed and I could turn up the volume it might solve it. However, when I use the included player with the sound card, with volume all the way up, the sound is still faint.

Sorry for the long post, I just want to give plenty of backround information. TIA :)

[juppy]

Hi Alaron56,
This is going to be a wild guess that may not work but its worth a try. I still use Win95 on my machine, and sometimes when I would try to install something from the Windows CD it would give me that same message of "Install from Disk 11". The only way I corrected mine was to eject the CD and when it ASKS for where the files are, put the CD back in and tell it to look there. Don't ask me why it needs this but my version of Win95 does it just about everytime and that's the only thing I can get to work. I always just figured it was a bug or something that it didn't actually go to the CD to check unless the CD door closed and told it to. Hope this helps but I'm not real confident it will. Just thought maybe you were running into the same stupid thing I did. :)

[reboot]

That's a real early version of Win95a on CD, and the installer thinks you installed it from floppy.
When prompted for the disk 11, or 12 (etc), just browse to the CD, or manually type in the box (default is A:\) the drive letter of your CD-ROM.

[Alaron]

Thanks for replies juppy and reboot. I did some work on the system.

When it prompted me to install the sound, I was able to install it using the cdrom. I just browsed to the cd. Thanks for that reboot. Now that I got that taken care of I moved on.
I went to the Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs>Windows Setup and I went down to Multimedia. I installed the "Volume Control" and CD Player. All went well.
I went into the Device manager to the Joystick adapter that had the yellow exclamation mark. I updated the driver and got that taken care of.I was also able to then up the resolution on the monitor. The board has integrated S3+ graphics. Its running 16bit color at 800x600.

The only problem that remains is the overall volume. Once I went into Volume Control and turned everything all the way up, the sound did get louder but it still was very faint. I tested the speakers on my computer to see if they could only go any louder. I have a Turtle Beach sound card. I was able to get them much louder on my system. Does any one have any ideas on how to get the volume up to a normal level? TIA :)

[jamesrpm]

Are the speakers powered? ie. do they have thier own power supply? If not you need powered speakers to hear much.

[reboot]

Also check that you have the speakers plugged in to the right jack on the back. If it's in the AUX jack, it will be very faint, but you can still hear it, if it's in the Audio Out jack, it should be blowing your eardrums.

[Alaron]

The set is not powered. They are just 2 small speakers that plug into the sound card.

I checked and double checked. They are definetly in the green Audio Out jack on the back of the card. It only has that, a Mic jack, a Line In jack and the gameport.

I was thinking maybe I should test the card in my computer to see if its the card or the system. Any other ideas before I try that?

[GaryRouth]

See if a friend has a set of powered speakers you can try. All the PC speakers I've every used in the green line out plug have been powered, even if it was only by batteries (thankfully no longer made like that anymore). I think your Turtle Beach is probably installed and working just fine. Something like the Labtec Spin-80 would be nice for a little two channel music.

. . . Gary

[reboot]

Some sound cards have a built in amp, some do not, or it's jumperable on or off.
Powered speakers would work, or check for jumpers on the card to enable the amp (probably a waste of time, but you can look).

[GaryRouth]

reboot - it's probably because I've never had a sound card expensive enough to have an amp included that I hadn't come across that! When you're rich and famous, can I tell my friends I knew you when . . .

Alaron - if it's an older Daytona or Montego series card, you'll probably need powered speakers - I'm guessing it's that era because you're running Win95 in that box.

When it's working, play the music really loud - maybe you can wake me up here in L.A. today - it's a groggy sleepy morning.
. . . Gary

[Alaron]

I checked the card, but theres no jumpers on it at all. I suppose I will just have to pick up a set of powered speakers. All of the other systems with these cards are using powered speakers, so I suppose thats the problem.

The cards are not old, just cheap. They only cost about $20. The one in this system is made by "Starlogic" and it is described as a "PCI 32-Bit Sound Card" that is Version 2.1 compatible. It has extraordinary 3D position audio effect.

Just out of curiousity, why is it that they would make a set of unpowered speakers that do not work correctly?

Thanks for help everyone! :)

[reboot]

It's not that they dont' work correctly, it's probably that they were originally supplied with a system that had a sound card with a built in amp.
I know some ancient ISA sound blaster's had an amp...(digging through drawers...) hey! here's one :D