blue screen blaming sound

Hi.
I'm using an x-fi soundblaster and in one particular game the computer keeps
crashing to blue stop screen at random intervals. It always blames
ha20x2k.sys which is a sound driver file and this only happens when the card
is in 'game mode' with eax effects enabled. I've tried using the creative
and the Dell drivers.

So far this has not happened in other games. But I'd like to test the card
and drivers so does anyone know of a program that will 'stress' a soundcard
particularly its eax abilities, in the same way that the 3Dmark05 etc can be
used to continuously run and test graphics cards?
Thanks.

"Frank" <> wrote in message
news:446f0558$0$8348$...
> Hi.
> I'm using an x-fi soundblaster and in one particular game the computer
> keeps
> crashing to blue stop screen at random intervals. It always blames
> ha20x2k.sys which is a sound driver file and this only happens when the
> card is in 'game mode' with eax effects enabled. I've tried using the
> creative and the Dell drivers.
>
> So far this has not happened in other games. But I'd like to test the card
> and drivers so does anyone know of a program that will 'stress' a
> soundcard particularly its eax abilities, in the same way that the
> 3Dmark05 etc can be used to continuously run and test graphics cards?
> Thanks.
>


I thought the full Creative software has a GUI diagnostic built in - or it
used to. I don't recall it as being "stressful", but it was a diag.

The Dell diags on their website or on the Resource CD can also internally
test the card I would think.

"Frank" <> wrote:
>I'm using an x-fi soundblaster and in one particular game the computer keeps
>crashing to blue stop screen at random intervals. It always blames
>ha20x2k.sys which is a sound driver file and this only happens when the card
>is in 'game mode' with eax effects enabled. I've tried using the creative
>and the Dell drivers.

I'm assuming these are the latest drivers available from each of Dell
and Creative? What's the rest of the BSOD error?

You could try tech support at Dell, Eax, and the vendor of the unnamed
game to see if they have any thoughts.

Dunno how much heat the card generates in "full bore" mode, but you
could also check to see if it's getting enough cooling airflow. I'd
also check the video card and CPU for cooling, maybe the BSOD error is
itself erroneous...

Google gets 81 hits for ha20x2k.sys, have you looked those over to see
if you could try some of those solutions? For instance, changing PCI
slot will give you different interrupts and potentially solve
interrupt conflicts.

Frank wrote:
> Hi.
> I'm using an x-fi soundblaster and in one particular game the computer keeps
> crashing to blue stop screen at random intervals. It always blames
> ha20x2k.sys which is a sound driver file and this only happens when the card
> is in 'game mode' with eax effects enabled. I've tried using the creative
> and the Dell drivers.
>
Back in the day sound cards were the worst part about video games. The
lack of available hardware interrupts and DMA channels constantly led to
issues. Do you have any other games which utilize EAX? You might want
to download a demo or two and see if the problem persists.

> So far this has not happened in other games. But I'd like to test the card
> and drivers so does anyone know of a program that will 'stress' a soundcard
> particularly its eax abilities, in the same way that the 3Dmark05 etc can be
> used to continuously run and test graphics cards?
> Thanks.
>
Well EAX is a subset of DirectSound, so perhaps there may be some
diagnostic for the DirectX utilities which can do this for you.