[SOLVED] Sound woes in WindowsXP SP3 guest on Fedora 10 Host

[jubba]

I just started using VirtualBox, and I must say that I am impressed! I've been using QEMU-KVM for a little under a year now, and the difference in ease-of-use is just amazing. I was able to get up and running with a new guest very quickly... my hat's off to you, VBox team.

I still have a niggling problem, though, with my shiny new Windows XP SP3 guest - I can't seem to get sound working, despite my best efforts and googling around.

Details:
Fedora 10 host machine, with Virtual Box 2.1.4.
Windows XP SP3 guest, installed with an ISO that was somewhat stripped down, I believe using nLite... Regardless, it wasn't a full "consumer-level" installation.

After creation of the VM, I enabled audio, set it to the AC'97 to feed into PulseAudio.

First time I booted the VM and went looking for my audio controller in the Device Manager, I noticed that it had a "Multimedia Audio Controller" with a yellow question mark. I tried to install automatically, naturally failing to find drivers. Did some googling around to determine the drivers I might need, and finally, though various posts here in the forums, went to go get the Realtek drivers, found here.

Grabbed the self-extracting installer, and tried running it... It progressed most of the way through the installation, then stopped, and immediately back-tracked, presumably upon some error. No message thrown, alas. Figuring it was just not able to detect the virtual hardware, I then grabbed the ZIP file containing just the files, and again attempted to install. The setup.exe installer failed as before, but installing via Device Manager or the New Hardware Wizard seemed to progress through the installation just fine...

...until right at the end, when it blue-screened on me. "Curses!", I thought.

I tried a variation: using the AC'97, but using ALSA instead of PulseAudio. Same bluescreen.

Thinking it might be something with antivirus software, I booted the VM into Safe Mode, fired up the installer, and watched what happened. The installer ran through just fine, and the device identified as a Realtek AC'97 device. Things were looking up. So I logged out the admin account, rebooted, and...

Blue screen when starting Windows. I wept a little, I think.

I ended up rebooting into Safe Mode and removing the drivers, then trying to switch to the SB16 virtual hardware. No joy with that, either.


So, now I ask to you lovely forum users - what might I try next? I'm not sure what logs or information would be relevant, so please forgive my ignorance; I'll post as soon as I know what's needed.

Thanks many times over!
-jubba

[EDIT: Updated to indicate it was solved!]

[jubba]

Oh - one more note. Uninstalling the antivirus completely didn't help either... still bluescreens.

-jubba

[vbox4me2]

Usually you need to delete the yellow marked device in device manager (Guest), then remove any .inf files hanging about from previous attempts but only sound related ones, reboot the VM. Or revert back with system restore to the yellow device mark and try the realtek drivers again. Or debug the BSOD messages to find which driver is doing the BSOD and remove/rename that one.

[jubba]

Hmm.

Well, I tried to remove the marked device; ended up deleting it from the Device Manager, and uninstalling the RealTek AC'97 via Add / Remove programs. Then, I could run the installer just fine, except that it still didn't actually install the device.

Trying to actually install the device just keeps BSOD on me... so I continue weeping.


I'll admit that I'm not sure if I'm getting all the remnants from earlier installation attempts; I'm not entirely sure where to look. Any recommendations for finding and removing those files?


-jubba

[vbox4me2]

Not really, it can be anything interfearing or even the wrong realtek drivers... come to think of it, why are most using realtek drivers??? this is my XP SP3 Guest:



All intel stuff and works fine.

[jubba]

Hmm... googling around, many references pointed to the RealTek drivers. Maybe because they're more easily found..? I dunno. Some people have had success with them, so it's gained momentum as the way to do it...

While I was looking, I couldn't really find a good place to nab Intel drivers... in fact, I came across more places where people were vehemently stating that they don't exist. Heh.

Any recommendations on where to get the Intel drivers? My WindowsXP installation CD was, as I mentioned, a stripped-down version, so I don't believe it had the drivers on-disc.

Thanks for all your help and patience, by the way! Even if it's not working right away, at least you're helping me to keep trying things.

-jubba

[vbox4me2]

If I remember correctly the driver came up either when I installed the GA or when I installed the VM OS... I'd have to do a new install to see when it popped up.

[jubba]

Glorious! With your help, I got sound working. Thanks many times to you!


For those with similar problems, I will attempt to restate the steps I took to get it working... Use at your own risk, YMMV, and all that apply. Probably a good idea to take a snapshot of your VM (I didn't... I'm still new at using VBox so I didn't think of it).

0. Boot the VM, login as an admin user, and temporarily disable any AV software that may interfere with installation. You may want to drop off the network, to be safe.
1. Uninstall the RealTek AC '97 drivers via Add / Remove Programs. Deleted the "Multimedia Audio Controller" with the yellow question mark
2. The installation wrote a pile of driver files into C:/WINDOWS/Temp, so I deleted those.
3. Based on the BSOD's information, I knew problems were appearing in portcls.sys, and from watching the installations, I knew this was being placed in C:/WINDOWS/System32/. So taking vbox4me2's advice, I deleted the file from that location. (I only did this because I knew it was a file that would be replaced during installation - be careful!)
4. I decided to take a harder stab at removing drivers from past installs, so while in C:/WINDOWS/System32/, I deleted the driver files from RealTek. There was only one in my case - make sure you don't delete some driver for something else.
a. The way I found the drivers was to turn on View->Details for the folder, right-clicked on the column headers, clicked "More...", and checked the "Description" column (note: *not* the Program Description. For me, "Description" was 4th from the bottom).
5. Shut down the VM (after restarting my AV, since I would be back on the network when I restarted).
6. In my guest settings, I turned off VT-x/AMD-v support. (I don't think this had any effect on the proceedings, but I list it here in case it was relevant.)
7. Looked more intently for Intel drivers in my host. Found a listing at http://www.soundcard-drivers.com/companies/496.htm of Intel drivers. While there was an apparent installer for "intel(r)82801AAAC'97 driver" for XP, the installer didn't actually work for me. Ended up downloading "82801DB DBM/DA AC97 driver" for Windows XP (and scanning with antivirus tools - I'm distrustful of many of these shady driver download sites).
8. Booted the VM, logged in as an admin. I installed the driver I downloaded via the Add New Hardware Wizard, selecting the Multimedia Audio Controller (or RealTek AC'97 - it came up as both at various times, and I don't recall which it was this time). Then, when prompted on how to install drivers, I picked "Don't Search, I will choose drivers" option + the "Have Disk..." button, to indicate the extracted zip file I downloaded.
9. It didn't BSOD on me, and I didn't expect much, since things had installed correctly, but just failed later.
10. Rebooted the VM, logged back in as admin, expecting to need to try some more drivers... and was shocked to hear the Windows "login music"!
11. Grinning, I shut down the VM, turned back on VT-x/AMD-v support (again, probably not relevant, but just in case), and rebooted. It's been fine since then.

The sound was choppy and broken up, but I imagine that's more likely a PulseAudio or timing issue; I had similar issues with QEMU-KVM and sound, though never really resolved them. So if I don't figure it out, that'll be another thread.


So - thank you for the support and suggestions! I hope the writeup I provided also helps some wayward soul that didn't have the Intel drivers pre-installed.

-jubba