Getting sound to work by merging the Win7 and WinXP drivers

Audio codec and audio ports
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vtailor
Posts: 229
Joined: Mon Sep 24, 2012 6:54 pm

Getting sound to work by merging the Win7 and WinXP drivers

Post by vtailor »

I have been experimenting with Windows XP-SP3 on the z530 fit-pc2i, and have commented before that getting the stereo compuer speakers to work properly is a problem. Yet I know from using it that the Windows 7 sound driver with the patch.exe program does indeed work correctly.

So, I got both Compulab audio drivers unzipped in separate directories and compared the components. The components are almost identical, except where the Vista directories show up in the Win7 driver. So, I got rid of the Vista etc. directories and copied over the corresponding Windows XP directories.

Not only did it work to give me analog output on the combination analog/spdif jack, but the realtek driver shows a pair of computer speakers making sounds. You need to run patch.exe manually after installation, then reboot, and you also need to turn the line volume up (I think), but then it works like a real computer.

And, of course, the reason for going back to Windows XP is that gma500 video acceleration works beautifully with Explorer 8 (which I used to dislike), and you get amazing streaming video, both flash 11.5 and silverlight, and I do mean amazing, at the economical resolution of 1440x900 that the gma500 was designed for.

vtailor
Posts: 229
Joined: Mon Sep 24, 2012 6:54 pm

Re: Getting sound to work by merging the Win7 and WinXP driv

Post by vtailor »

To be more nearly precise, you unzip the Windows 7 audio driver, take patch.exe from it, and copy it into c:/program files/realtek/audio/drivers/WDM. It probably helps to get the realtek HD sound effects from the control panel and set it on analog speakers before using the patch.exe program. And, by all means, restart. If you did it right, you'll hear the login sounds on your speakers.

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