Aureal Vortex Sound Loss Fix

Introduction

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 PCI Configuration Register 40 on the sound card, the sound loss problem is eliminated. All credit for this method goes to him and permission has been given to reproduce the fix here.

Step 1: Installing WPCREDIT and WPCRSET

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.

Step 2: Identifying the PCI address of the sound card

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.

Step 3: Setting the register to program in WPCRSET

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.

Step 4 (Optional): Check that the Register has been set

After Restarting, launch WPCREDIT again.

Click on the circled button from Step 2 and select the Audio Controller device.

Check that Register 40 is still set to FF

Troubleshooting

If you completed these steps successfully, then the sound card should be outputting sound. If not, then please check the following:

Aureal Vortex 2 and Advantage cards may have Front and Rear Outputs. Check to make sure that you have plugged your speakers into the Front socket.
If your computer has a Voice Modem or TV Tuner card, then it may be set as the default playback/recording device, especially with Windows 2000. Go into the Control Panel and select Sounds and Audio Devices (XP) and on the Audio tab and ensure that the default device for Playback and Recording is Aureal Audio.

Alternative Methods

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.

Install George Breese's PCI Latency Patch (VIA Only)

Download

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.

VIA AGP Bridge/PCI Bus Master Fix

View Guide

This guide describes how to change a register on the VIA 694 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).

BIOS Tweaks

View Guide

Some BIOSes have options which as a side-effect enable the above fix. Not all do though, and some users experience no difference whatsoever.