Windows 10 host, XP guest, sound stutters?

[loukingjr]

Try the new 5.0.4 release. It has some audio fixes.

[chriswyatt]

I was trying to do the same exact thing a couple of days ago... run the Sims Complete on XP and found the sound was horrible. I did some searching and read someone was having trouble with sound when the Guest Additions were installed. I uninstalled the GAs and the sound in the game is now flawless!

Edit: After uninstalling the GAs, I was prompted to install new hardware by Windows. I installed the Virtualbox video drivers that way, ran the game and had the same problem. So I disabled the device in Device Manager, rebooted and the game works again. I'm going to take a wild guess and say that it has something to do with the video driver.

I discovered this last time I tried to run The Sims 1. I first tried disabling audio acceleration (through Sounds in the Control Panel) but this did not fix the problem. I then tried disabling video acceleration, which seemed a bit counter-intuitive, but it was worth a try: surprisingly, it worked. When hardware acceleration is disabled, the mouse cursor drawing speed is less smooth it seems. This is probably a slightly cleaner fix.

It's worth mentioning I'm using Windows XP SP3 (32-bit), DirectX 9.0c and VIrtualBox 5.0.12, running under a Windows 10 (64-bit) host.

When I used to use Windows XP a lot, when I had problems with games I would probably try to fix it in this order:

• * Fiddle with compatibility settings
  * Try setting resolution and colour depth to that which the game expects
  * Search on the internet to see if anyone else has the problem
  * Fiddle with hardware acceleration
  * Update drivers

Also I discovered that many old games broke when one of the service packs was released (can't remember which one). I think it was the one that merged some changes that were made in newer Windows releases. So if you have issues running games, a last resort could be to create a new Windows XP VM and disable automatic updates; license permitting and assuming you have an old version of Windows XP lying around (as I do).

Also it's worth trying the game out in WINE. Sadly, WINE still has issues running The Sims 1.