CMI 8738 PCI card makes Win XP freeze

[marks]

Hello people,

Having some trouble here concerning a PCI soundcard that's admittedly quite cheap and nasty, but should at least work... only it doesn't.


Card: Trust SC-5250
Chipset: CMI 8738/C3DX

System: Win XP Pro 2002

Motherboard: ECS K7SOM+
Processor: AMD Duron 1.3 GHz
RAM: 224 MB

My problem is that no matter what I do, once I install the card it will only ever work for a maximum of around 4 seconds before Windows irretrievably freezes and I have to hard-reset the machine.

I've tried all the usual stuff - disable onboard sound, un/reinstall the card several times, try various different driver versions (from the Trust website, Creative's website and many other places besides), but no matter what I do, the effect is the same.

Any advice?

[drasnor]

Does it crash when the card is physically installed or only after the drivers are loaded?

-drasnor :fold:

[marks]

Only after the drivers are loaded. I physically install the thing, load the drivers, then it will play music (with whatever software) for roughly four seconds before the computer inevitably crashes.

[drasnor]

Does the system hang or do you get a BSoD? If so, what error?

Have you tried installing the card in a different PCI slot? You may be having trouble with the card not wanting to share IRQs and a different PCI slot may share resources with a less-needy peripheral.

-drasnor :fold:

[marks]

It just hangs - keyboard stops responding, mouse stops responding, soundcard freezes on the same sample (ie it repeats the same split second indefinitely, if you know what i mean), no error message at all.

Thanks for the PCI slot suggestion. I tried that this evening with no luck - swapped it over to the slot that had previously housed my wireless card, but the same problem remained.

By the way, my device manager, under Sound, Video and Game Controllers, lists the following alongside the card itself and associated Midi controller ("MPU-401 compatible midi device"):

Audio Codecs
Legacy Audio Drivers
Legacy Video Capture Devices
Media Control Devices
Video Codecs

I guess this is all pretty standard stuff to have. However, if I double-click on any one of these and then click the Properties tab, it crashes Device Manager, bringing up the message "Microsoft Management Concole has encountered a problem and needs to close." The error signature is as follows:

AppName: mmc.exe AppVer: 5.1.2600.0 ModName: lameacm.acm
ModVer: 0.0.9.0 Offset: 0000116e

I have to admit that I don't really know what this means - however, could it be symptomatic of a wider problem?

[drasnor]

Does it crash while doing Windows noises or just when playing music? Also, are the music files you're playing mp3s?

lameacm.acm is the Windows version of the LAME mp3 audio codec. LAME is a pretty good codec but since it's open source people tend to bundle the unstable development versions in codec packs. Windows ships with the Fraunhoffer mp3 codec which is fine for most people so you don't really need LAME. Try uninstalling the LAME codec by running regsvr32.exe /u lameacm.acm from Start/Run.

-drasnor :fold:

[marks]

I use a 'no sounds' scheme for Windows, but it crashes whenever the computer attempts to make any sound of any type. The music files I've been attempting to play are MP3s, wavs, wma and others besides.

I tried to uninstall Lame but got the following error:

lameacm.acm was loaded, but the DllUnregisterServer entry point was not found.

lameacm does not appear to be a .DLL or .OCX file.
:hair:

[drasnor]

If it crashes for all kinds of sounds then we're back to drivers or hardware. However, it seems you've covered all your bases on the drivers front. Try the card in a different computer. If it works, then the card is incompatible with your motherboard. If it doesn't, you've got a bum card and should file for a RMA.

I would not be surprised in the slightest if the card doesn't like your motherboard. I have nothing nice to say on the quality of SiS chipsets, older ones in particular.

-drasnor :fold: