NT DOS and PC Speaker

[Daveman750]

I've noticed a very strange error when attempting to run old DOS-based
games. It only happens on one of my XP machines, and doesn't happen in
safe mode. It seems that NTVDM basically freezes up on the first call
to the internal PC speaker used for sound in the DOS days, or to the
sound card. Anything without any kind of sound works fine, and
anything with sound works fine until it starts trying to make some
noise. Again, this happens across many programs, on only one machine,
and does not happen in safe mode. Any suggestons? Thanks in advance.

 

[M]

You could try setting IRQ 5 to legacy (in the BIOS) and see if this fixes
the problem.

 

[Daveman750]

I actually figured it out, although I'm not sure if it's related to IRQ
5. Installing S2KCTL, which enables bus disconnect for my Athlon XP,
screws this up even when it is not running. I reformatted since I kind
of wanted to before this anyway and it worked until I reinstalled this
program. I then used system restore to get rid of it and everything
worked again.

To find out, I'm going to create another system restore point, set IRQ
5 to legacy and install S2KCTL and see what happens.