In Virtual XP Wrong Soundcard

[Cheemag]

The one programme I particularly want to run under V-XP needs to use the soundcard.

However, the soundcard shown in that programme and others is not the onboard soundcard used by Windows 7. V-XP gives only a Soundblaster which is definitely not fitted. The onboard one, which works well in straight Windows-7 is a AC-97 clone.

Any ideas why XP is behaving in this way? I have Windows-7 Professional.

 

[Kari]

First, welcome to the Seven Forums, Cheemag.

All virtual machines, including XP Mode, use their own emulated hardware. For XP Mode and other Virtual PC machines, this means for instance a very limited S3 Trio GPU and a SoundBlaster 16 compatible sound card. You can not use the hardware components of your host system, nor can you change, upgrade, the emulated hardware.

Think XP Mode as any other computer in your network. Each machine can only use the hardware installed on that machine. Computer A can not use the audio hardware of computer B.

Sorry to tell you this, but if the program you are trying to run on XP Mode does not recognize SoundBlaster, there's not much you can do.

Kari

 

[Cheemag]

First, welcome to the Seven Forums, Cheemag.

All virtual machines, including XP Mode, use their own emulated hardware. For XP Mode and other Virtual PC machines, this means for instance a very limited S3 Trio GPU and a SoundBlaster 16 compatible sound card. You can not use the hardware components of your host system, nor can you change, upgrade, the emulated hardware.

Think XP Mode as any other computer in your network. Each machine can only use the hardware installed on that machine. Computer A can not use the audio hardware of computer B.

Sorry to tell you this, but if the program you are trying to run on XP Mode does not recognize SoundBlaster, there's not much you can do.

Kari

Thank you.

 

[rosiermaryr]

How to start a new thread?

How can I start a new thread. Don't see where to do it. Seems like it should be obvious, but I've searched hi and lo for a link...
Sorry to post in your thread, but couldn't think of another way to be "heard"

 

[Kari]

Hi Rosiermaryr, welcome to the Seven Forums.

From forums front page, choose the section, sub-forum you want to (News, General Discussion, Drivers, Graphic Cards and so on). Click the New Thread button to start a thread in that forum.



Kari

@Cheemag, please don't shoot the messenger...

 

[Cheemag]

Hi Rosiermaryr, welcome to the Seven Forums.

From forums front page, choose the section, sub-forum you want to (News, General Discussion, Drivers, Graphic Cards and so on). Click the New Thread button to start a thread in that forum.

View attachment 85847

Kari

@Cheemag, please don't shoot the messenger...

I don't follow. The smiley was to express disappointment.

Further to this: if I were to install a Soundblaster and deactivate the internal Realtek card, would it work then?

 

[Kari]

Cheemag, I understood you OK. My response was just for fun, nothing else, which I tried to tell with the wink smiley. Please forgive me if you thought that to be anything else.

 

[Cheemag]

Cheemag, I understood you OK. My response was just for fun, nothing else, which I tried to tell with the wink smiley. Please forgive me if you thought that to be anything else.

No problem. You are forgiven!

What about the second part of my last post?

If I were to install a Soundblaster in the physical (host) machine, would that be recognised and used by the virtual OS?

 

[Kari]

What about the second part of my last post?

If I were to install a Soundblaster in the physical (host) machine, would that be recognised and used by the virtual OS?

I answered that before you asked the question

All virtual machines, including XP Mode, use their own emulated hardware. For XP Mode and other Virtual PC machines, this means for instance a very limited S3 Trio GPU and a SoundBlaster 16 compatible sound card. You can not use the hardware components of your host system, nor can you change, upgrade, the emulated hardware.

Think XP Mode as any other computer in your network. Each machine can only use the hardware installed on that machine. Computer A can not use the audio hardware of computer B.

In this context, XP Mode i.e. a virtual machine is really like any other computer in your network. A computer can not use the soundcard of another computer.

Sorry, again...

 

[Cheemag]

What about the second part of my last post?

If I were to install a Soundblaster in the physical (host) machine, would that be recognised and used by the virtual OS?

I answered that before you asked the question

All virtual machines, including XP Mode, use their own emulated hardware. For XP Mode and other Virtual PC machines, this means for instance a very limited S3 Trio GPU and a SoundBlaster 16 compatible sound card. You can not use the hardware components of your host system, nor can you change, upgrade, the emulated hardware.

Think XP Mode as any other computer in your network. Each machine can only use the hardware installed on that machine. Computer A can not use the audio hardware of computer B.

In this context, XP Mode i.e. a virtual machine is really like any other computer in your network. A computer can not use the soundcard of another computer.

It can use the hard disc !

Sorry, again...

So the XP virtual machine has an emulated Soundblaster ... to what end if you cannot use it? Where do you input the sound to this virtual soundcard?

 

[Kari]

Ok, you are right. Virtual machine can use some of the host's hardware, the drives. Nothing else.

I play some old DOS games on XP Mode, sound comes quite nicely using XP Mode's emulated SoundBlaster. Virtual machines are thought to be mostly for business use, I think playing older games is not very high on the priority lists of Virtual PC coding people.

 

[mickey megabyte]

cheemag, kari knows what he's talking about - listen to him.

are you trying to record sound?

you won't be able to record sound inside your virtual machine no matter what hardware you have in your real machine.

if your app only works in xp, then i'm afraid you'll have to use a real xp installation. it is quite easy to have a dual-boot 7/xp system. naturally, you'll need an xp install disc and a valid serial key. a tutorial is here if you need it.

what is the particular app/problem you have? maybe we can help suggest alternatives?

 

[Cheemag]

cheemag, kari knows what he's talking about - listen to him.

are you trying to record sound?

you won't be able to record sound inside your virtual machine no matter what hardware you have in your real machine.

if your app only works in xp, then i'm afraid you'll have to use a real xp installation. it is quite easy to have a dual-boot 7/xp system. naturally, you'll need an xp install disc and a valid serial key. a tutorial is here if you need it.

what is the particular app/problem you have? maybe we can help suggest alternatives?

I'm not saying he doesn't know what he is talking about - it's just that his contention that the emulation doesn't use host hardware doesn't hold water.

I am trying to run a programme which uses the DSP functions of a soundcard, not specifically to record sound.

I have at least two genuine XP install discs, one from a defunct computer and one from a rather old machine which is to be scrapped. I don't think their licences would allow them to be installed on this machine as a dual boot with Windows-7. (?)

Thanks for the link to the tutorial. I'll have a look at it later.

 

[mickey megabyte]

...
I'm not saying he doesn't know what he is talking about - it's just that his contention that the emulation doesn't use host hardware doesn't hold water.

do a google - 7 xp mode hardware drivers - or whatever terms you like.

yes, emulation will use your host hardware, otherwise you'll never see anything, or be able to use your mouse etc - but it can only emulate very simple basic hardware - in this case, the good old soundblaster.

Virtual PC emulates the following environments:

• Intel Pentium II (32-bit) processor (but virtualizes the host processor on Windows versions) with an Intel 440BX chipset.
  
• Standard SVGA VESA graphics card (S3 Trio 32 PCI with 4 MB video RAM, adjustable in later versions up to 16 MB by manually editing a virtual machine's settings file).
  
• System BIOS from American Megatrends (AMI).
  
• Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 ISA PnP. (When Vista is installed as both the host (main) and guest (virtual) operating systems, settings are synchronized with the host and audio configuration is not required.)
  
• DEC 21041 (DEC 21140 in newer versions) Ethernet network card.
  
• Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 and earlier do not have the ability to redirect USB devices to the guest machine, although devices connected to the host OS via USB can be used as normal by Virtual PC.
  
• Programs using undocumented features of hardware, exotic timings, or unsupported opcodes may not work.

i'm not sure about your license situation with xp.

 

[Kari]

I'm not saying he doesn't know what he is talking about - it's just that his contention that the emulation doesn't use host hardware doesn't hold water.

Cheemag, yes it holds the water. Your critic doesn't. Other than drives, all hardware is emulated and XP Mode can not use host's hardware. If it couldn't use the drives, it would be impossible to install and use.

Installing normal XP from your own install media is not going to solve your issue. As I have already mentioned (post #2), this issue, using emulated hardware, is not just an XP Mode issue. All virtual machines use emulated hardware, and they can not use hardware of the host (exception: drives, which are naturally needed for virtual machine to run).

IMO only solution is to install XP on a dual boot system, as Mickey already suggested.

Kari

do a google - 7 xp mode hardware drivers - or whatever terms you like.

yes, emulation will use your host hardware, otherwise you'll never see anything, or be able to use your mouse etc - but it can only emulate very simple basic hardware - in this case, the good old soundblaster.

Mickey, it is not possible to change the emulated hardware components of a virtual machine. You have to play with you have, or not to play at all. That's what I mean when I say you can not use host's hardware.

Of course the emulated SoundBlaster uses host's soundcard to produce sound, and emulated S3 Trio GPU uses host's GPU to show the virtual machine. But that's it. It's common, accepted way to explain this saying that a virtual machine has it's own emulated hardware setup, where individual hardware components can not be changed (again, exeption the drives of the host).

 

[Cheemag]

...
I'm not saying he doesn't know what he is talking about - it's just that his contention that the emulation doesn't use host hardware doesn't hold water.

do a google - 7 xp mode hardware drivers - or whatever terms you like.

yes, emulation will use your host hardware, otherwise you'll never see anything, or be able to use your mouse etc - but it can only emulate very simple basic hardware - in this case, the good old soundblaster.

Virtual PC emulates the following environments:

• Intel Pentium II (32-bit) processor (but virtualizes the host processor on Windows versions) with an Intel 440BX chipset.
• Standard SVGA VESA graphics card (S3 Trio 32 PCI with 4 MB video RAM, adjustable in later versions up to 16 MB by manually editing a virtual machine's settings file).
• System BIOS from American Megatrends (AMI).
• Creative Labs Sound Blaster 16 ISA PnP. (When Vista is installed as both the host (main) and guest (virtual) operating systems, settings are synchronized with the host and audio configuration is not required.)
• DEC 21041 (DEC 21140 in newer versions) Ethernet network card.
• Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 and earlier do not have the ability to redirect USB devices to the guest machine, although devices connected to the host OS via USB can be used as normal by Virtual PC.
• Programs using undocumented features of hardware, exotic timings, or unsupported opcodes may not work.

Thank you ... so it CAN and does use host hardware.
Except that, in the case of the sound card it cannot use external inputs such as LineIn and Mic.

i'm not sure about your license situation with xp.

The usual. You can only use that system disc on the machine it was originally tied to, even if that machine is defunct and the OS out-of-date. Would have thought the UK/EU's Unfair Terms in Contracts legislation would have outlawed that.

Might be able to get round it though ...

 

[Kari]

Absurd.

Last time:

All virtual machines installed on Virtual PC use emulated hardware devices. A virtual machine can not use hardware devices (exception: drives) of the host computer. Virtual machine uses resources of the host's devices for the emulation, for instance emulated SoundBlaster audio device directs the output to the sound device of the host computer, but virtual machine is not able to use that device directly.

It's very clear you don't like what I'm saying. Nevertheless, that is how a virtual machine works, and it isn't my fault. There is absolutely no way to use other audio device on virtual XP, be it XP Mode or any other virtual XP installation.

10-7, bailing out.

Kari

 

[Barman58]

This is untried by me, and therefore for reference only

The only way of getting around the virtual hardware in a VM that I am aware of is the use of USB devices which should transparently work as designed within the VM. There are available USB sound cards which may enable functions within the VM that are not normally available - this would of course depend on the hardware involved.

In a last resort scenario where functions are required and a native XP is not an option this may be worth checking out