Many people have experienced problems with their Aureal based sound card after installing Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows 2003 Server. The symptoms are loss of sound, usually just after the Windows startup sound, but in some cases it can occur a few minutes or hours into a Windows session.
Vortex of Sound Forum contributor Obseedian discovered that by changing Register 40 on the sound card, the sound loss problem is eliminated. All credit for this method goes to him.
Download WPCREDIT/WPCRSET from here
Extract it into C:\Windows\WPCREDIT - DO NOT run directly from the Zip archive
Run the INSTDD.EXE file to install WPCRSET and restart when prompted
The next thing to do is to identify the PCI address of your sound card. After Windows has restarted, launch WPCREDIT.EXE.
Run WPCREDIT.EXE
The following screen will appear, click on the circled button (the one with the green card on it)
Click to enlarge
A list of all AGP/PCI/CardBus devices in your system will appear. Look in the 4th and 5th columns for:
12EB 0001 for Aureal Vortex (AU8820)
12EB 0002 for Aureal Vortex 2 (AU8830)
12EB 0003 for Aureal Vortex Advantage (AU8810)
Take a note of the numbers in Bus#, Dev# and Func# you will need these for Step 3. In this example, the numbers are Bus 0, Dev 9, Func 0.
Run WPCRSET.EXE
Ensure that in the Startup box at the top, WPCRSET is set to Start, and Device is set to Enable as shown in the image below.
Click on the Add button and an Add Register box will pop up with Bus, Device, Function, Register and Data boxes.
Enter the numbers from Step 2 in the Bus, Device and Function boxes. Enter 40 in the Register box and FF in the data box. Click OK.
Click OK in the main program to close it. You will be prompted to restart your computer, click Yes. It is very important that you restart.
After Restarting, launch WPCREDIT again.
Click on the circled button from Step 2 and select the Audio Controller device.
Check that Register 40 is set to FF
If you completed these steps successfully, then the sound card should be outputting sound. If not, then please check the following:
The following a couple of other methods, which may not work on all hardware, but if you problems enabling the Register 40 (Obseedian) fix, then you should try these.
Some versions of George Breese's PCI Latency Patch include the Aureal Register 40 Fix. Version 0.19d also includes my AGP Bridge fix (described below). The version here is 0.19d which is the only one which includes both the Aureal Register 40 fix, and the AGP Bridge fix. Please consult the documentation for supported chipsets.
This guide describes how to change a register on the VIA AGP Bridge. For this to work you MUST have a VIA AGP Controller, it WILL NOT work on AMD or Intel AGP chipsets. It will NOT work on motherboards with AMD/VIA hybrid chipsets (i.e. those with an AMD North-Bridge and VIA South-Bridge).
Some BIOSes have options which as a side-effect enable the above fix. Not all do though, and some users experience no difference whatsoever.
