Problem:
Very low volume level when playing WAV, MP3 or Music CD with an ISA Sound
Blaster 16 (model CT2290) Sound card, on a COMPAQ Deskpro EP – P350 with a
Pentium II processor 350 Mzh, 192 Mb RAM and a 20 Gb hard disk running
Windows XP professional (Spanish).

Sound device installed (from Control Panel/System/Device Manager):

Sound Blaster 16, AWE32 or compatible (WDM), from Microsoft, date
01/07/2001 version 5.1.2535.0

Resources:
I/O 0220 – 022F
I/O 0330 – 0331
I/O 0338 – 038B
IRQ 05
DMA 01
DMA 05

Driver Files:
C:\Windows\System32\Dirvers:

ctlsb16.sys Creative Tech. 5.1.2501 WinDDK
Drmk.sys Microsoft 5.1.2600
Ks.sys Microsoft 5.1.2600
Portcls.sys Microsoft 5.1.2600
Stream.sys Microsoft 5.1.2600

C:\Windows\System32:

ksproxy.ax Microsoft 5.1.2600
Ksuser.dll Microsoft 5.1.2600
Wdmaud.drv Microsoft 5.1.2600


Windows Media Player 8.00.00.4477

This is my old machine I used at the office that I brought home. It is
still ok to browse the web but it didn’t have a sound card. This
motherboard has two ISA slots, so I looked for my old Sound Blaster 16
(retail version, NOT OEM) and installed it. Device manager reports no
conflicts, “the device is working properly” but the sound level is very low
even moving the sound control volume all the way up and turning the speakers
volume control knob to the maximum.

I couldn’t find any Windows XP drivers for this card browsing Creative’s
Tech. Web site or anywhere else. I requested support to Creative Tech.
but they just don’t support this card any more.

To find out if there was any kind of incompatibility between the
motherboard, the sound card or speakers (the original speakers are gone long
time ago) I unplugged the hard disk and installed an old 850 Mb disk in its
place. Formatted the disk and installed Windows 98. Running this Compaq
under Windows 98 with Win 98 drivers, the sound card works perfectly, which
means that there isn’t any hardware incompatibility and the that the problem
might be the Win XP drivers or some other piece of software.

I know that this is an old sound card, but it’s just fine to play some music
while you work or browse the web, so why not use it ?

Any suggestions?

Please e-mail to:



Darwin Montaldo