No sound. I tried all the recommended fixes, without result. But before I go into all that, perhaps the following is a vital clue. The problem started when I tried to add the mixer icon to the task bar. Sound went dead, the yellow horn icon disappeared and the mixer icon remained...except it is totally unresponsive to mouse clicks

Have you looked in the control panel, select the Icon named MultiMedia in that fist box that pops up look to the lower left corner and select 'Show volume on the taskbar'

If you are still in trouble let us know exactly what you did when you tried to add the mixer icon to the task bar.

DerekW

OK here goes.

Multimedia/Multimedia Properties/Audio tab
ALL BOXES GREYED OUT

Multimedia/Multimedia Properties/Device tab
C-Media card entered correctly under 'Audio
Devices' and 'Mixer Devices'.

System Properties/Device Manager tab
Card listed correctly under 'Sound Video and Game Controllers'.

I have deleted and reloaded the sound card software a couple of times. I suspect when I tried to install the mixer icon into the task bar, something objected and shut down. Perhaps there is an .ini file somewhere in which there is a 1 where there should be a 0. Or vice versa.

Can I assume you've tried deleting the entry in Device Manager and rebooting?

When you say everything in the Audio tab is greyed out, does that include the drop-downs for Preferred Devices?

When you say you tried to install the mixer icon into the task bar, do you mean Windows Sndvol32 or the mixer for the card. What exactly did you do?

Is this a new card?

Subject to the above the only thing I can think of is to take out the card, reboot then uninstall the card software from Control Panel/Add-Remove. Put back the card, reboot and see if you can point it to the driver CD when it asks for it.

I don't know of any .ini file to do with this but you could always search *.ini I suppose. There might be a folder for your card in c:\program files in which case if you uninstall the software you could make sure the folder and contents have been deleted. The remnants might be causing problems.

Maybe there's some food for thought here but sometimes these soundcard installs seem surprisingly tricky. It wouldn't be the first time I've found software shoving in XP drivers on a W98SE and so forth.

DerekW

Yes, I deleted the entry in device manager and rebooted.

Yes, the drop downs for preferred devices are also greyed out.

I even ran 'dxdiag', and under sounds it indicated no sound card was found.

In some other forum for a similar sound problem, someone suggested the general.idf file may be corrupted, and reinstall it from the Win98 CD. How do I do this?

Finally, would it be a risky process to reinstall the entire win98se program on top of the old? If it is risky, perhaps I should swallow my lumps and do without the damn sound!

general.idf file is for midi music so I'm none too confident this will help. You can get it off the CD and replace it automatically, like this:

Put your W98SE CD in the drive but hold the shift key down until it has stopped reading to save it trying to install Windows (you can always exit if it does).

Type sfc in the Run box. Go to the "extract one file" feature (2nd blob down) and type in general.idf

Point it to your CD drive D:\win98 or Browse (assuming D is your drive). It will almost certainly say it is putting it in c:\windows\config - but send it there if you get a blank box.

Happy to be amazed if it does the trick!

Having introduced SFC to you here's a little warning for the future:
SFC CAN GET IT WRONG (see my collation and WhitPhil's additions). That file is an original anyway and it doesn't appear to get updated so it's fine to extract using sfc.

Reloading Windows on top is pretty darned safe, if it comes to it. Some of your own settings might get lost, possibly the odd program will need re-installing and maybe some Updates. You don't loose your own files.

Seems like a sledgehammer to crack a nut but I have to admit I can't think of any other way forward if that file doesn't help. Possibly some registry entries have got messed up.

Well....there is one other possibility, scanreg /restore (shut down to MS-DOS), but you didn't say if you were installing a new card or whether this "just happened after you were fiddling". If you were installing a card then going back to a previous registry might make things worse and Windows overlay would be better.

I'm still unclear about what you did (see my para 3 in #4).

DerekW

Thanks for all your help, Derek. Perhaps the following is a clue. It is the error message attached to the seemingly irremovable mixer icon in the tool bar:

MIXER caused an invalid page fault in
module MIXER.EXE at 0167:004016bb.
Registers:
EAX=00000000 CS=0167 EIP=004016bb EFLGS=00210216
EBX=014a5718 SS=016f ESP=0127bf4c EBP=0127bf88
ECX=00000000 DS=016f ESI=014a5654 FS=3947
EDX=0127bf50 ES=016f EDI=bfc01bad GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
8b 08 68 0c 2b 45 00 52 50 ff 51 0c 85 c0 75 48
Stack dump:
00000000 00000024 00000011 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 0040165f 00000000 00452b08 00000000

If this doesn't help, I will simply do without sound until a few current projects are finished.

Brian

Well, you've solved one mystery for me. I've wondered all along what mixer icon you meant and I gather that mixer.exe is part of C-Media and not part of Windows normal provision (sndvol32.exe).

Can you confirm whether this was following the installation of a new soundcard?

Also, where did you go to set the icon in the taskbar - within the C-Media program or to the Control Panel/Multimedia?

What is going through my mind is a possible workaround using the Windows mixer instead. If C-Media has taken that over that function then it would be difficult - hence the question.

DerekW

Yes, that mixer icon is part of C-Media, and I have never changed the sound card. I got the icon from C:\Windows, where it is listed as Mixer.exe from C-Media.

OK gotcha. Agreed, it seems very reasonable to make a shortcut to the file. Not sure if you just did this manually or whether you invoked it via the C-Media program somehow. If you did it manually perhaps this jarred something but I'm at a loss to understand what.

I'm running short of ideas. I've been back through your post and you've about tried everything I can think of.

The only thing that I suppose might help somehow is to go to Control Panel/Add-Remove. In Windows Setup/Multimedia tick the Volume Control box (you will need your W98SE CD).

This should put the normal Windows mixer icon on the system tray (next to the clock). Double click it and make sure nothing vital is muted.

Even if this helps it still leaves the mystery of the blanked out stuff in Control Panel/Multimedia and the unusable
C-Media icon. Incidentally is this icon also in the System Tray or is it in the Quick Launch tray next to the Start button?

One other thing (which might be best to consider before the above) is restoring a previous registry. You restart in MS-DOS using Start button/Shut down. Once the C prompt arrives you type scanreg /restore (hit Return). You then choose a date just before this happened, if there is still one there.

Otherwise I feel I should post a new link to this post to see if we can spark off a bit more interest because we are not getting very far.

DerekW