Originally posted by krazyhorse
bugger getting the same thing trying to set my son's new puter up also it will not recognize OB audio dmn pain in the patoote
Usually its the DirectX accelerated sound causing the problem, more often and not it affects on-board sound chips and codecs.
Fixes are to make sure you have the latest drivers for the on-board sound (visit your Mother Boards manufacturer's web site and look for updates for the onboard sound), or visit the sound chip manufacturer's site to see if there are later drivers. Make sure that you download the right ones for your sound chip, usually this is listed in the motherboard docs. Ditto for SB sound cards.
Next run DirectX diagnostics (type dxdiag in the start "run" box)
Go to the sound section and run the sound tests. Its best to turn down the sound aceleration there at least one notch if you have an SB card or on-board sound. Move the slider in DirectX sound diagnostics one step left which will reduce overall acceleration.
Usually one notch is sufficient to cure the problem.
You may also get this initialization failure if you start AH "immediately" after you have hit your internet dialup or cable modem if it has been turned off or disconnected. Wait a second to let your internet connection stabilize before trying to run AH and logon.
I had exactly these problems, and later drivers, and reducing sound acceleration in DirectX cured it for me, but see my note below:
Another problem that "could" be causing sound problems and directX initialization failure on sound is if the sound chip is using the Same interupt as either the video card /AGP slot, or a Network card.
PCI Steering system resources are of no importance in sharing, but it is best to keep your sound interupt for PCI sound card OR onboard sound chipset on a separate interupt to your Network card or video if possible. You may have to juggle these in bios. For PnP you may have to assign an interupt in bios to the Network card, or for cable cards, if you don't use serial ports, disabling one or both would give additional interupts to play with. This particularly affects Win98/ME though XP seems to accept shared interupts more readily. Onboard sound chips usually get assigned to int 10, so if you can get video onto 11, and any network card onto 9 all should work more stable.
