Major sound problems

[colbell]

I'm currently running an Asus A7n8X-X with onboard AC97 sound. I'm having problems with the sound, in such that in certain games, the sound will be distorted very badly with a lot of crackle and a buzzy echo. I've tried updated drivers, as well as the default drivers, all to no success. Apparently I'm not alone in this, as the motherboard runs NForce 2 chipset, I've heard of a few more people with the same problem.

To counter this, I tried to install a Creative Soundblaster card, but to no avail.
Once the sounblaster was installed, I found I could hear my microphone loud and clear, but I got no other sounds at all, no Windows sounds for log on and log off, and no sounds from any application I was running, but my microphone worked through it all. On checking the audio settings, everything was unmuted and all volumes set to maximum.

The soundcard is a known good card, as I borrowed it from a machine that had working sound.

Is there anything else I need to check, activate or disable to allow me to use the soundcard instead of onboard sound?

[morriswindgate]

What games are you running, as some older games when using XP need to be ran in a compatability mode in order to properly run.

[colbell]

I'm not running XP at the moment, as I lost my XP cd beefore I built my new pc, so I had to put 98SE on it.

The sound issues ingame are with:
Planetside
Morrowind
Counter-strike/Day of Defeat through Steam
Ghost Recon

[morriswindgate]

WHat other cards are sharing the IRQ with the sound card?

[colbell]

The only things sharing the same IRQ are ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Sharing. No other peripherals are on the same IRQ.

Just to update, I've been told that the Nforce audio drivers are probably conflicting with the souncard drivers, so I've removed the soundcard for now.
Another thing I was asked to do was drop my hardware acceleration in DirectX audio by a notch and see if that solved my problem.

I'll report back on that after I've tested it out.

(The strange thing is, through all this audio trouble, I've been able to play my mp3 collection without any sound problems)

[colbell]

Grrr the problem is still there, although not as often.

Gonna go out and buy myself a new copy of XP and see if that will cure it, I'm thinking of using a soundcard instead of onboard too, so are there any tips for disabling onboard and installing the card without conflicts or issues?

[Panama Red]

When I installed a sound card in one of my comps, I first went to device manager and unselected the "enable this device" box for the onboard and then uninstalled the Sound Max software in Add/Remove Programs. Shut down, install sound card, restart, add drivers when asked. If you "remove" the onboard instead of disable, Windows just finds it again and installs the driver for the onboard.

[glc]

Red, you also need to disable the onboard sound in the bios or it will keep getting detected.

[Panama Red]

Thanx, g. I did do that too. Forgot about it.

[colbell]

Thanks Guys, I followed those tips and managed to get my soundcard installed without any hassle, everythings working a-ok without any sound performance issues now.

Just in time for Christmas too, hope you all have a good one

[Panama Red]

Now you can share with the neighbors!! CRANK IT UP!