Fresh Rebuild, sound issues,?

[John Prophet]

I just used a guys restore disk on his Acer Aspire (not sure of the model number cuz he pulled the front door off the box)....anyway, I chose the reformat and reinstall option....everything seemed to go just fine.

its W98.

I noticed there was no windows sound when it went into windows...no big deal, I just figured it was how the acer desktop theme was.

So I go to adjust the volume slider to make sure the sound is working and it gives the little normal chime sound but the sound "locks up"...or rather, you know, keeps repeating.

Whatever sound it makes it just freezes on that sound and repeats it over and over.

This is a fresh restore, lol.

So I tried.

Installing Direct x 8.0
Changing desktop themes.
Running sfc.
Running DrWatson.

Nothing has made any difference.



Any clues why this would be happening?


The cd player plays audio cds just fine. So I guess it is just on .wav files??

If I go into control panel/sounds and click on one of the sounds it will freeze again and just repeat the sound.



Whats up with that??


Ill try to get the model number from the guy tonight.


Thanks, JP

[Micro Bean]

Hmmm One thing you havent tried was trying to get an updated driver for the soundcard. Goto the manufacture website and look for the latest driver maybe that will help solving the problem. Do you know any specs on this computer? WHat type of mobo etc etc?

[John Prophet]

Well you are absolutely correct....yesterday I didnt know the model number of the comp etc (hehe, I forgot to look on the back of the case).

Anyway I called the guy and asked him if he ever had that problem before, but he said no. Then he called back and remembered that in fact he did...and a tech came out and he said the tech muted something and fixed it....I am guessing he simply muted the .wav sounds which didnt really "fix" anything, lol.

Anyway, I tried several things but I think I found the problem.

After it had done the frozen repeat sound I looked in task manager by doing ctrl/alt/del and noticed that "sndvol32" was still running though the volume control wasnt still on the screen.

So I went to sfc and extracted and restored the "sndvol32.exe" file....no go, still did it cuz it locked up when it made the sound saying it had restored the file, lol.

So I went into SAFE MODE and ran sfc again and restored the sndvol32 again and this time it fixed the problem.

I booted up with crossed fingers and, yes, I got my windows sounds which I hadnt been getting..then I clicked the vol control and got my nice little "ping" without it locking the sound.

I am halfway curious now to run the whole restore disk again to see if the problem repeats...cuz evidently the restore program somehow corrupts the sndvol32 file.


Anyway, a satisfying fix.

JP