I recently installed a new Biostart M7VIG motherboard and have been experiencing issues with the onboard sound while playing Counter-Strike. It seems some stupid software came with the drivers called "Sound Effects Manager", also refered to as "SoundMan". This software is made by Avance Logic, Inc. (what a stupid name) and has to be the most useless app ever. The manager has the ability to set "environment sound effects" such as the effect of being under water or in a stone corridor. While playing CS, this stupid app somehow manages to set itself according to my situation.. I can't really explain it. If I'm in spectator mode, and I move outside of the map it'll go into the under water effect and stay with it until i use soundman to turn it back off. I tried deleting the soundman.exe file from the \windows dir but the effects still took place. Does anyone know how I can completely rid my system of these useless and terribly annoying "effects" and the soundman program in general? Here's a link to my mobo for reference: http://www.biostar.com.tw/products/mainboard/socket_a/m7vig/index.php3

I had the same problem with that software and never install extra software anymore in xp. You should have went to add/remove programs and removed it. Then you have to search your drive for the folder and delete that. Then go into your registry hkey/localmachine/software and delete the folder there also. Hope that helps If not you may have to completely remove your sound drivers and do clean install.

Tried uninstalling/reinstalling the drivers and different versions of them. Still having the same issues. This stupid soundman crap seems embedded in the chipset practically. Installing drivers somehow put a newer version of it on my compuer. I'm so confused. Even the onboard sound from my old BCM p2/3 mobo worked better than this crap.

Ok I checked mine out further since we have the same sound. You cannot have sound without the sound manager. So assuming you have it all installed and your manager is loaded in your taskbar as mine always is... Open sound manager and make sure under environment it says "none" and no other boxes are checked anywhere except show in taskbar. That is how my settings are and I have no problems with games etc. Maybe you accidentally checked something.

open msconfig uncheck soundman.exe and the problem is solved. It will not be loaded when you reboot.

These are all things I've tried. Like I said though, no matter what I do with the soundman program, it will change effects on it's own when I'm playing Counter-Strike. Specificly the problem with loading the "under water" effect when I go outside the general area of a map in spectator mode. Getting the systray icon to not load on startup changes nothing, and putting the effects on "none" is only temporary until it changes itself to something else again. Robbie, are you saying I'm stuck with this problem no matter what? Maybe Biostar wasn't such a good choice afterall...

Have you been to Biostar's website for a driver update? My Gigabyte GA-7vrx uses the same onboard sound, and I got rid of the soundman thing long ago, with no ill effects.