Muddy sound all of a sudden from games

I have a four-year-old Win98 PC that I use more for email, word
processing, than anything else, but my kids use it to play simple,
low-end computer games.

A couple weeks ago, my son was trying to play an Atari "Thomas the Tank
Engine Saves the Day" game, and it would lock the computer up every time
it was launched. I tracked the error message down to being related to
the sound card. I was able to download newer drivers for my
SoundBlaster card than the 1999 drivers that had come on the computer.
Game still didn't work though, so I gave up on that.

Since that time, the kids have complained about muddy, fuzzy sound on
another game, Knowledge Adventure's Jump Start Explorer.

I'm looking for some simple suggestions about what might be wrong. The
knowledge base on the jumpstart.com web site had nothing that worked.

All other audio sounds fine on the computer. That includes playing CDs,
MP3 files, other games, both older and newer than the Jump Start game.

I've run dxdiag and the sound card checks out fine.

I've uninstalled the Jump Start game and reinstalled it.

I've cleaned the CD that the game is on.

The sound remains muddy.

My kids can live, and boy can I certainly live, without clean sound on
their Jump Start Explorer game. But it's bugging me that this problem
seemingly just suddenly appeared, and it seems to be a simple one, and I
can't come close to cracking it.

Help! (?)

"timmons" wrote in message
...
I have a four-year-old Win98 PC that I use more for email, word
processing, than anything else, but my kids use it to play simple,
low-end computer games.

A couple weeks ago, my son was trying to play an Atari "Thomas the Tank
Engine Saves the Day" game, and it would lock the computer up every time
it was launched. I tracked the error message down to being related to
the sound card. I was able to download newer drivers for my
SoundBlaster card than the 1999 drivers that had come on the computer.
Game still didn't work though, so I gave up on that.

Since that time, the kids have complained about muddy, fuzzy sound on
another game, Knowledge Adventure's Jump Start Explorer.

I'm looking for some simple suggestions about what might be wrong. The
knowledge base on the jumpstart.com web site had nothing that worked.

All other audio sounds fine on the computer. That includes playing CDs,
MP3 files, other games, both older and newer than the Jump Start game.

I've run dxdiag and the sound card checks out fine.

I've uninstalled the Jump Start game and reinstalled it.

I've cleaned the CD that the game is on.

The sound remains muddy.

My kids can live, and boy can I certainly live, without clean sound on
their Jump Start Explorer game. But it's bugging me that this problem
seemingly just suddenly appeared, and it seems to be a simple one, and I
can't come close to cracking it.

Help! (?)

Bad CD

timmons wrote:

snip
Since that time, the kids have complained about muddy, fuzzy sound on
another game, Knowledge Adventure's Jump Start Explorer.

snip

If I read your message correctly, the fuzzy sound for this game started
with a change of drivers for the sound card. That is, the sound for this
game was good with the old driver and bad with the new one.

The obvious question is does the sound improve back to normal when the
original driver is re-installed? If that is the case, you know what to do.

In general, you may have installed a driver that does not exactly match
your sound card. Or, you may not have set all the functions (within your
driver) for the sound card. Without the details specific to your model
card and the drivers obtained from Creative, you won't get any good answers.

On Fri, 02 Jul 2004 02:08:12 GMT As another one bit the dust timmons
wrote :

I have a four-year-old Win98 PC that I use more for email, word
processing, than anything else, but my kids use it to play simple,
low-end computer games.

A couple weeks ago, my son was trying to play an Atari "Thomas the Tank
Engine Saves the Day" game, and it would lock the computer up every time
it was launched. I tracked the error message down to being related to
the sound card. I was able to download newer drivers for my
SoundBlaster card than the 1999 drivers that had come on the computer.
Game still didn't work though, so I gave up on that.

Since that time, the kids have complained about muddy, fuzzy sound on
another game, Knowledge Adventure's Jump Start Explorer.

I'm looking for some simple suggestions about what might be wrong. The
knowledge base on the jumpstart.com web site had nothing that worked.

All other audio sounds fine on the computer. That includes playing CDs,
MP3 files, other games, both older and newer than the Jump Start game.

I've run dxdiag and the sound card checks out fine.

I've uninstalled the Jump Start game and reinstalled it.

I've cleaned the CD that the game is on.

The sound remains muddy.

My kids can live, and boy can I certainly live, without clean sound on
their Jump Start Explorer game. But it's bugging me that this problem
seemingly just suddenly appeared, and it seems to be a simple one, and I
can't come close to cracking it.

Help! (?)

Device Manager problem.
Click here,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/drivers.html
HTH



--
Free Windows/PC help,
http://www.geocities.com/sheppola/trouble.html
email shepATpartyheld.de
Free songs to download and,"BURN" :O)
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/8/nomessiahsmusic.htm

In article
,
timmons wrote:

I have a four-year-old Win98 PC that I use more for email, word
processing, than anything else, but my kids use it to play simple,
low-end computer games.

A couple weeks ago, my son was trying to play an Atari "Thomas the Tank
Engine Saves the Day" game, and it would lock the computer up every time
it was launched. I tracked the error message down to being related to
the sound card. I was able to download newer drivers for my
SoundBlaster card than the 1999 drivers that had come on the computer.
Game still didn't work though, so I gave up on that.

Since that time, the kids have complained about muddy, fuzzy sound on
another game, Knowledge Adventure's Jump Start Explorer.

I'm looking for some simple suggestions about what might be wrong. The
knowledge base on the jumpstart.com web site had nothing that worked.

All other audio sounds fine on the computer. That includes playing CDs,
MP3 files, other games, both older and newer than the Jump Start game.

I've run dxdiag and the sound card checks out fine.

I've uninstalled the Jump Start game and reinstalled it.

I've cleaned the CD that the game is on.

The sound remains muddy.

My kids can live, and boy can I certainly live, without clean sound on
their Jump Start Explorer game. But it's bugging me that this problem
seemingly just suddenly appeared, and it seems to be a simple one, and I
can't come close to cracking it.

Help! (?)

I think I fixed the problem. I got the driver I'd mentioned above from
some web site that has a library of drivers on it. This time, I went to
the Creative Labs site, searched for my SoundBlaster card (didn't see an
exact match; I had a somethingorother 64V; all they had was
somethingorother64), and downloaded and installed the recommended driver
for that.

All other sound remains fine on my computer including Direct Sound. But
the Jump Start Explorer game no longer sounds muddy.

Sorry by the way for my lack of specific information here; I'm posting
from my work computer and the problems are on my home computer. If
there are other questions, I'll email the specific details to myself
next time before I post!