Trouble with Wing Commander 3

Very true, very true. I knew it would happen too. Just shows my stupidity, I guess. Anyway, I have just spent a decent amount of time searching through EVERY WC3 related help request in this forum (since it was created), and I was amazed at how many people had exactly the same problem I am having. Unfortunately, there was never any clear resolution to any of those problems that I could see, so I still don't know what to do. It is obvious to me that it is a sound card problem (from what I have observed in the other threads), but how to fix it still escapes me. I keep hoping some all-wise, all-knowing type will show up and explain all the mysteries of Wing Commander to me, but that has not yet happened. Perhaps I'll stumble on a solution myself. Oh well, I am able to play perfectly without sound (except for having to calibrate everytime I load the game, as I said earlier), so I suppose I should content myself with that for now. I do hope for a solution someday, though.
 
Stinger is probably your best hope. :)

I don't recall what sound card you have. When you checked its system properties in windows, are they the same as what you installed the game with?
 
Well, it would be nice if he would show up, but I suppose most people have better things to do than just post here all day (like sleep!). Anyway, here's my card situation. When I go to Sound, Video, and Game Controllers, I get a list of four things: Crystal SoundFusion[tm] Game Device, Crystal SoundFusion[tm] Joystick, Crystal SoundFusion[tm] PCI Audio Accelerator, and HID-compliant game controller. The Game Device says 0220-022F for I/O and 0388-38B for I/O (it has it twice). For IRQ it has 05, and for DMA it has 01. The PCI Audio Accelerator says 09 for IRQ and doesn't have the others, so I'm assuming the Crystal SoundFusion[tm] Game Device is the right one. So, I used its settings for my sound setup, and passed the sound tests, but in game I had popping sounds, the video was slightly weird, and eventually (usually before I finished talking with Hobbes; I had skipped the intro video) it would cut out and give this message:

Exception 13 happened

CS:EIP = 0127:00001B3E
EAX = 80808080, EBX = 0000E0B8, ECX = 00001FFF, EDX = 00000003
ESI = 00001594, EDI = 00008000, EBP = 000F6C54, ESP = 000F6C0C
DS = 0117, ES = 011F, FS = 0117, GS = 0000, SS = 00CF
EFLAGS = 00010206

Callers:
1) 00000000 5) 00000000
2) 00000000 6) 00000000
3) 00000000 7) 00000000
4) 00000000 8) 00000000

This error is probably the result of a bad CD-ROM read.
Please try running the game again from your latest save
game and the problem should go away. If the problem
persists, you may have a bad CD. If you continue to have trouble,
please call Origin Customer Service for more information

which I have already mentioned. Anyway, I hope that information helped a little. Well, I am going to bed now, and as I have class tomorrow, I will not be back here to check things until after 1 at least. Maybe someone brilliant will think of something before then. Otherwise, I'll make do with my current situation (or do homework).
 
hmm

It should be possible to get that sound chip working in DOS; I've seen that one here before. Sorry I didn't show up earlier, but I didn't want to go through the miles of posts in this thread. Still haven't.

Anyway, do you have DOS drivers for that chip?
 
No, I don't have the DOS drivers, and I'm not sure where to get them either. I'm sure that would help, though. I should note, though, that I was able to test the MIDI sound in DOS, so something is being detected. I should also note that ever since I was able to get the game to install and run in Windows (although without sound), I have been trying to get it to work in Windows. However, if I could get something working in DOS, I would be happy to run the game that way. After all, DOS was my first love (well, as far as computer OS's go).
 
Oh, and in something completely unrelated, why did people have weird pictures under their names for the last few days? Some sort of April Fools thing? Everything seems normal now.
 
No, you're right, it was for April Fools - it's just that some liked it, others didn't. I'm one of the latter.
 
I see, makes sense. That's why it's nice being a lowly cadet. You don't even have a picture (of course, with these tech support questions, I'll reach 2nd Lt. soon enough).

Anyway, back to the issue at hand. I tried installing the game in Windows, setting the sound to theoretically work, and then saving my settings. I then restarted in MS-DOS mode and tried to run the game from there. Unfortunately, I had the same problem I had in Windows. Oh well, scratch that plan. I should note that when testing sound fx, I get the same popping sound in the test that I get in the game (before it cuts out). The MIDI sound performs flawlessly in the test.
 
I solved my WC4's Exception 13 by backing up my save games, deleting WC4, running scandisk and defragging fully (it was defrag c: /f at the time, in DOS), then reinstalling and copying back my savegames.
 
That's interesting. One of our comps at home started acting up at certain hard drive reads - I scandisked and defragged everything and now there's no problem.
 
hmmhh...that's weird. Well, I'll try scandisking and defraging my hard drive. Hopefully something will work. As far as the error goes, in Windows, I get the exception 13 error, but in DOS, the videos just cut out after about a second (and there's no sound for the speaking at all).
 
Hmm....

Looks like a sound configuration problem (in DOS, anyway). Which OEM did you get your computer from (Dell, HP, etc.)?
 
Well, to help things, I'll go ahead and list my system configuration (just don't laugh).

It's a Celeron 400 (by eMachines) with 128 MB Ram, a Crystal SoundFusion sound card and a Voodoo5 5500 PCI video card. There's more, of course, but I think that's the important stuff. I did scandisk (including a full surface scan) yesterday, and sometime today, I plan to defrag my hard drive, so maybe those things will help. We'll see.
 
Hmm... It's probably your exotic sound card acting up. They're fine now, but sound blaster emulation was often problematic under DOS.
 
What do you mean they're fine now? The cards are? I still haven't defragged yet, so maybe that will help, but we'll see. As I have said, the game does acknowledge my sound card for a while, so at least it knows the card is there.
 
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