Everytime I boot up...

[mr.me123]

Hello everyone.

Everytime I start up my PC since a few days ago, in the bottom right corner of the screen, a window pops up and starts searching for Freectrl.exe. I have Windows 98 second edition and I was wondering if anybody knows how to turn off certain functions at start up such as this search for a shortcut that pops up everytime I boot up.

Thx!

[Markoman01027]

Hello Mr. ME12

Open up MSCONFIG and run their selective startp and go to the Startup tab and see if that is running anywere.

[mr.me123]

thx for the instructions Markoman. what you told me worked and i am happy with it

[Markoman01027]

You welcome Mr Me! Glad I could help! Come back to PCMECH for anymore questions/probems that you are having with your computer! We will give you a solution nomatter how hard the problem is! Take care

[mr.me123]

Thx talk to you later

[GaryRouth]

Hi all

Glad that Matt got you going again.

Just out of curiousity, mr.me - did you change your sound card or drivers just before this happened? That file "freectrl.exe" seems to be associated with an Aureal sound card called the Vortex 2. (There's a webpage that mentions it as part of a manual uninstall http://www.vortexofsound.com/techhelp/th-v2a54.htm )

If you changed sound cards, the older drivers might not have uninstalled completely.
. . . Gary

[mr.me123]

Yes Gary. I knew the freectrl.exe file had to do with sound card drivers. The file specifically is part of Audio In-Control Tools from Diamond and I had just updated the drivers on my Monster Sound MX400 series sound card. I hope this answered your question.

[mr.me123]

The sound card is pretty old and I am looking to upgrade to a better sound card soon. I have an ancient Abit KT7-RAID motherboard and I was wondering if you could possibly help me find a compatible sound card. I was looking at a Creative Labs Sound Audigy Gamer but I found an article where Abit mobo's were having problems with Creative Labs sound cards. Any advice would be welcome. Thx

[GaryRouth]

Hi again

You might/might not be OK with the Creative card on that board. Most of the problems were originally with the Live! series of cards. Some folks were able to get decent sound after motherboard bios upgrades, Live! driver updates, and/or "IDE bios patches". The problems experienced were usually stuttering/popping sound - and at the worst, IDE timing problems so severe that data corruption and trouble burning CD-Rs resulted. It turns out it may have been an oversight in Via's implementation of that generation IDE bus in the 686b SouthBridge portion of the KT133 chipset (this was nicely explained in an article at viahardware.com - but that site is now Sudhian.com & I'm not sure the article is still available). Anyway, "bus parking" wasn't implemented, but the sound card driver folks never heard about it, and wrote their drivers expecting that it was.

But the Audigy is fairly recent, so it might be OK.

If there are any KT7 owners out there with the Creative Audigy - jump right in a let us know: Thumbs Up? Thumbs Down?
_____
Other boards with no past run-ins with the 686b/KT133 would be those like the Turtle Beach Santa Cruz, the Philips Acoustic Edge, and the Hercules cards.

The fellow with the most sound card experience here at PC Mech would have to be audiyoda (Craig). He knows just about all there is to know about sound waves.

Best of luck
. . . Gary

[p.s. . . . & I don't mean to worry you about your KT7 board: it's a well-made board by a top maker. And the bios updates fixed the timing issues for most installations]