(Windows 98) Problems Installing Crystal Audio Sound Drivers

I recently picked up an HP Pavilion XL866 from a friend who has no use for it anymore. I installed Win98 SE and want to use the machine for old CD-ROM games. I easily got the video drivers installed and working, but am stumped on the sound drivers. The chip is a Crystal Audio AC'97 compatible device, and after much searching I managed to find 3 different sets of drivers that might work.

The first set I came across is in a folder named "CSAC97" that contains a set of VXD drivers. I ran setup and restarted the machine, and the device now appears as "Crystal Audio Codec" in Device Manager with an exclamation icon. The dialogue says the device is not working properly or may be missing drivers. I updated the drivers using the same directory and Windows found a INF file. This time I was told the installation is successful, yet the device can't be used for audio I/O. I restart, and I'm back where I was before with the "improperly working" Crystal Audio Codec device.

The second set of drivers I have is in a folder named "ALC850" and contains drivers by Realtek. I run setup, restart, and now the device appears as such:

http://i54.tinypic.com/5bxu9l.png

I view properties and see this:

http://i53.tinypic.com/96lpxf.png

This is as far as I get with the second set of drivers I found, with the system sound device still unusable. As for the third set, it's a self-extracting archive, "WDM_A406.EXE." I start it, it unpacks everything to a directory, and setup starts. Just before the installation finishes the program performs an illegal operation, but setup seems to continue and finish. After a restart the device still has the yellow icon in the Device Manager and is, of course, unusable.

I seem to have some potentially working drivers here (I didn't see any "incompatible hardware" errors), but I'm having different problems with all 3 of them. I can't seem to find anything else besides these anywhere on the internet and have probably done a good 2+ hours of searching. Can anyone help me? Any assistance is much appreciated.

 

For the audio driver try this.

http://www.viaarena.com/displaydrivers.aspx?PageID=1&OSID=7&CatID=1500&SubCatID=104

For your ethernet try this:

http://www.realtek.com/downloads/do...d=6&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false

You want the following:

Auto installation program (support Win98SE/WinME) version 5.707

 

If the Via audio driver does not work, what you have is a Cirrus Logic/Crystal chip. I do not know the chip number. Maybe you can see it on the motherboard.

Here are drivers for Cirrus Logic / Crystal

http://www.nodevice.com/driver/company/Cirrus_Logic.html

It has been such a long time since I have used 98SE. Can you click properties on the device in Device Manager and get the Hardware and Vendor ID? If not, you can download Unknown Device Identifier and see what sound chip you actually have or at least the Vendor and Hardware ID.

 

It appears that the Pavilion XL866 was sold with 2 different Crystal audio chips: the CS4281 and the CS4299. I have attached below the driver for each chip in .ZIP format. They do NOT have "setup.exe" files so they MUST be installed via the device manager. I haven't worked on a W98 system in years, but you'd have to right-click on the device in the Device Manager, select "update driver" or something similar, then use the wizard to 'force' it to use one of these drivers.... I hope one of 'em works! (obviously, you have to unzip 'em first LOL)

If you don't use dial-up internet- unplug the power cord from the PC, open the case, remove the screw that secures the modem and remove it from the PC - or simply ignore the "PCI communications device" in the Device Manager; it has no effect on anything except for dial-up internet access; it can be safely ignored and/or disabled and/or removed.

 

Oh yeah - I know one of the drivers I attached works for sure with W98, the other one should (I don't remember which is which :wine :-o ) - both are old WDM drivers and should be OK with W98SE (Win98 Second Edition; if it's not Second Edition, other problems like USB compatibility will arise also)... also, I noticed that the ethernet (aka NIC or LAN) drivers aren't installed. I'm pretty sure it's a Realtek 8139 chip (I'm not positive), if it is, these drivers are EASILY found online w/ a quick Google search or at this link.

Let us know how it works out!
:major

 

Thanks for the fast responses! I've had this up on the Tom's Hardware forums for 4 days and it hasn't seen any help. This seems to be a great site for quality assistance, thanks!

I'm currently in the process of moving so I don't have all the peripherals together to use the machine right now, but here's the what the chip says: VIA VT82C686A 0036CG TAIWAN IDCON3111. It is in fact a VIA chip, especially since none of the model numbers appear on the Crystal download page. I'm eager to get this going and am sure at least one of these links will do the trick, but first I need to get a monitor for this as I won't be bringing this machine with me to my apartment. I'll post back with an update when I get a chance.

 

If the drivers I attached above do not work, please follow the steps in this link to create and attach an Everest hardware/software report.... in addition to "Unknown Device Identifier" suggested above by tgell, you can also use Unknown Devices (my personal choice, but either one is OK). Right click on the sound device listed in Unknown Devices and select "Device Details". Then copy/paste this info in to Notepad and/or post it here....

 

Almost a month later and I finally got some time (and a monitor). dlb, first of all I have having issues uninstalling the Realtek driver. Every time I remove the device and restart, Windows finds it again and automatically assigns this driver to it again. I noticed it uses one file in c:\windows\drivers, and attempts to delete it using autoexec.bat have been unsuccessful. I can't delete the file using command because access is denied for it. There must be a better way to stop Windows from assigning this driver automatically, no?

Because of this, Windows will only let me install another driver or update the current one. Attempting to install another driver results in Windows telling me the current driver is up to date. Attempting to update it by right clicking "update driver", selecting "choose from a list of drivers" and selecting "have disk" results in a "device not fully compatible with this driver" error with CS4281.zip, as well as the second listed driver for CS4299. The first listed CS4299 driver does not give me this error, however, attempting to install all three drivers results in a DLL error and an illegal program operation. I can't get anywhere with either file, probably because I'm trying to update these drivers rather than installing them clean.

I'm sure this will work as soon as I figure out how to completely clean out the Realtek drivers.

 

If the Realtek drivers are listed in "Add/Remove Program", you can try using Revo Uninstaller to remove it, but I think Revo is for WinXP and up, not W98. You can try this older driver remover program; it's has been abandoned since 2003 (meaning no new development since '03), so it should work with Win98, but I have NEVER used it for anything. All I can suggest otherwise is try to "force" the correct driver by ignoring the message that says "device not fully compatible with this driver" and "force" Windows to accept that driver. I've done this with sound drivers and modem drivers when things got rough. Since you're running Win98, I'm way out of practice and can't offer any pointed accurate advice, I haven't even seen Win98 running on a PC in at least 4-5 years....

 

I will try that tomorrow, thanks.

 

After removing the old Realtek and Crystal drivers from Add/Remove Programs and installing CS4281, I finally have working sound! Did a Directsound test and everything checks out. Should I be concerned over the fact that the chipset doesn't support hardware buffering though?

 

:dood Glad I could help get your sound working again, finally!

As to the hardware buffering, it shouldn't be a problem, and the only way around it is to install a PCI sound card that has hardware buffering. Since the PC is pretty old, you're a bit limited by its power (or lack of power), so you won't be running any high-end resource hungry programs/games that will have an effect on the buffering....

 

Lack of power? Amazingly I seem to get much better performance/compatibility running games in software mode. XD Probably Windows 95 games + 1GHz CPU. My video card is pretty minimal.