Sound and EAX ( mss32.dll ) issues

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imp07 said:
hey guys, finished downloading The Witcher EE this morning off of steam, went to options to max everything except when i try to turn on eax and click accept, the game shuts down and an error msg pops up saying the witcher experienced an unkown error. I am not the only one to experience this problem, and i assume it was something to do with creative sound cards. http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?p=8159330&posted=1#post8159330 Here is my computer setup:Intel C2D E6600EVGA 8800GTX2 Gigs of RamXi-fi Xtreme MusicLatest Direct X drivers (had to get the august update for Sup Com forged alliance). And for the record i have never had a problem like this with another game, in terms of audio problems or selecting eax or whatever.
I selected EAX for fun, knowing it wasn't going to work - and it didn't. But I was surprised that it crashed the game. In any case, I believe The Witcher requires EAX 4.0. I don't know what your card provides, but that might be a clue for you. For the devs of the game, it might be a good thing to add code to prevent that unfriendly application crash if the installed system doesn't have EAX capable hardware.
 
im positive that my card supports eax 4.0. I just loaded up medieval 2 total war which supports eax 4.0, and thats what i have selected and what i have been playing on since i got the game!!!
 
imp07 said:
im positive that my card supports eax 4.0. I just loaded up medieval 2 total war which supports eax 4.0, and thats what i have selected and what i have been playing on since i got the game!!!
There are many games that I can pick EAX in the options but my computer doesn't support EAX. And those games don't crash. I just don't get EAX acceleration or sound. I'm only saying that in this game, if your hardware is not EAX 4.0, it may crash. But if you're certain your sound card actually is EAX 4.0 compatible, then please disregard my note. Good luck!
 
i looked around the web, all x-fi's support 4 and eax 5. I had really old drivers (2005) lol and just updated to the lastest from 2008, thinking that might be the problem. I assume the witcher is having problems detecting that my card is eax 4.0 for some reason.
 
pogothemonkey0 said:
I also bought this game from steam and have the same problem. The original worked on my computer with no trouble, but this will not.I have a Creative X-Fi card that came with its own software. I cant find the hardware acceleration option to turn it off. Can someone give directions for it?
From your 'Start' menu click on 'Run' and type 'dxdiag' (without the quotes) and click 'Ok'.. on the sound tab you can change the acceleration settings, a slider near the bottom left. This should work for you. Good luck :)Edit: lol.. sorry.. didnt notice the edit before I posted.. ah well.. just one more way to do it I guess :)
 
Sorry for another post, but i was trying to figure out if eax is properly working with other games. i did a test with medieval 2 total war. For x-fi cards you need to be on game mode for eax 4 and 5 to work. So i switched to music mode, loaded up medieval total war 2, and tried to select eax 4. However a message came up saying i didnt have the right hardware and so i was stuck on miles 2 or whatever that sound system is. When i loaded it again after switching back my sound card to game mode as I normally run it, I can select eax 4.0 fine. I am now positive it is a specific problem with The Witcher recognizing my x-fi card or something along those lines...
 
I have an X-Fi XtremeGamer and am having the same problem even with the latest driver. I have heard complaints from other games due to the X-Fi cards, namely LotRO which I myself had the problem. I have a feeling it isn't the game but the card. Hopefully someone will have an idea on how to fix it.I have attached my dxdiag file for anyone wanting to look it over.Anyone?Edit: I have submitted the problem to Atari Support. If I get a solution from them, I will be sure to post it here. Dont hold your breath for anything quick though..From Atari "Response time may take up to 7-10 business days while our Customer Support operations are in transition. We apologize for any inconvenience."Oh yay.. :wall:
 
LicaonKter said:
read: Getting tech help on the forum and attach that PCWizard report here as instructed
My apologies. I thought dxdiag would give the same info without adding yet another program to my system. My bad.So I did as instructed, however, I am unable to do a drivers report like the page says. The 'Parameters' area is greyed out so I am unable to check 'with the drivers information'. Suggestions?ST_ghost, I had previously read that thread you linked to and it doesn't cover this problem. I can get into the game and play, but it wont let me choose the EAX option. The game crashes as soon as I hit 'Accept'. My card is quite capable of running EAX 4.0 and higher and the game has the option, so I simply want to enhance my gameplay experience by turning that option on, yet it crashes. As you can see above, I am attempting to get the proper report to post here but as yet cannot. Sorry :(
 
I also have this problem and the changing the sound hardware acceleration fixed it. Also selecting EAX in-game also crashes it immediately. Interestingly on the same PC yesterday with the original game patched to 1.3 I could select EAX wthout any difficulty. Machine specs. :-Windows XP Pro sp3Nvidia 8800gtsSoundblaster Xi-FI Xtreme Gamer
 
I have Realtek ALC885/889A which is an onboard sound card that came with my Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4. As with the other guys, original game had no such issues, this one downloaded via Steam does. Having said that, moving the slide a notch trick did work for me - however, NOD32 had to be dealt with by adding the whole EE folder to the exception list plus the issue of missing CD keys is not resolved yet - but these are separate issues unrelated to game crashing :) Left a note on Steam's support page yesterday no response so far.
 
sorry i will fill out that stuff later as i am at work right now. I am curious however as to what you mean by some x-fi's arent true x-fis. Mine is not oem, but a retail version i picked up with all the creative documents, registered etc... Plus eax works fine on my other pc titles, and so im curious why the witcher's eax setting is causing problems for me.Edit: running xp
 
LicaonKter said:
all of you have X-FI Xtreme Gamer ?
I have the XtremeGamer. I am able to run the game, I just can't turn on EAX or it crashes.I posted about it along with my PCWizard report here in this thread http://www.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?topic=16709.0
 
lisior said:
I have Realtek ALC885/889A
It won't offload the sound from CPU, providing the hardware acceleration you'd get otherwise if using a soundblaster EAX board. It's a software codec (coder/decoder, but mis-called a realtek 'driver') that handles the sound. You would probably do better both sound and performance-wise (in all games/apps) by not selecting EAX. That said, it's still possible that this game could better handle the trapping of the error (if possible) as in other games it wouldn't actually crash the game if you select EAX with a non-EAX card. The other possibility is that perhaps there's a problem with the realtek codec not handling the issue specifically with this game. HTH.btw, a quick google turned up some background on realtek support for EAX. Here's one report giving a history of this type of problem, if interested. It's a bit old, but most of the information relevant to this issue is still valid.http://techreport.com/discussions.x/12970http://techreport.com/articles.x/11171/1[edited to add the first, more relevant, url link]
 
few sound cards truly support EAX, and even fewer on-board onesthe on-board soundboard, like the other on-board features that were exclusively external once, are there just to fulfil one goal, to provide a minimum of support, because it costs time and development money to squeeze so many features, that you would find on a 4 inch long sound card, into a 0.5squareinch sound chiplike the integrated video cards, you can see and work with them ( browsing, office work, movies ), but don't expect to play the Witcher with all graphic details on HIGH on a ATI HD3200/nvidia 8200/intel 4500 integrated video card, so don't expect EAX 5 and audiophile sound quality on a Realtek/ADi2000/CMedia chip(ok, so many actually expect that their integrated video card works ok with Witcher, and they come here complaining, sorry :D )
 
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