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Sound in Windows 98 on VMware

By admin | February 27, 2010

Windows 98 Sound in VMware

Windows 98 Sound in VMware

By default, even after installing the VMWare Tools provided by VMWare (Player, Workstation or Server), the VMWare Tools package still does not install an audio driver, even though it installed a mouse driver and a SVGA driver for true colour graphics. However, most of the time we would like some audio in Windows 9x guests, whether to test old Win9x applications or to have a copy of Windows to run Windows-only software that refuses to run under Linux or Wine.

Requirements

  1. DirectX 9.0 (important, very important, without it you’ll get the dreaded NTKERN.VXD and MMDEVLDR.VXD errors)
  2. Creative Ensoniq AudioPCI drivers (the card emulated by VMware)
  3. eapci8m.ecw (if you want to play MIDI files)
  4. Windows 9x (98 FE or SE, but should work on all versions of Windows) running in…
  5. A VMWare product (any, be it Server, Player or Workstation) with VMWare Tools installed.

Steps

  1. Run SBPCI_WebDrvsV5_12_01.exe and install it, but do not reboot.
  2. Move eapci8m.ecw to C:\windows\system.
  3. Install DirectX 9 (directx_9c_redist.exe).
  4. Now restart the system.
  5. After logging in, sound should start working. Enjoy!

Troubleshooting The NTKERN.VXD and MMDEVLDR.VXD device loader(s) for this device could not load the device driver. (Code 2)

This error message results because the code used by Creative Technology, Inc uses APIs from DirectX or other supporting libraries that are not incuded by default with Windows 98. Installing the DirectX 9 package did however fix the problem.

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Topics: Windows | 11 Comments »

11 Responses to “Sound in Windows 98 on VMware”

  1. Allen Says:
    March 13th, 2010 at 1:08 pm

    I’m trying to set up VMPlayer to play some old Windows 98 games on 64-bit Vista. Was having some trouble getting the sound to work. This guide worked perfectly, thank you.

  2. VM MANIAC Says:
    August 19th, 2010 at 9:07 am

    works perfect

  3. Anthony Says:
    September 5th, 2010 at 5:46 pm

    Dude, you are the freaking man! How the hell did you figure this out?

  4. giovanni Says:
    November 1st, 2010 at 7:54 pm

    ok FINE!!!!
    if the step 1 causes an error, install directx9, first.

  5. Bryce Says:
    January 23rd, 2011 at 12:42 am

    This works great for Windows XP on VMware as well, although on windows xp you probably already have directx9. I imagine it would also work great for windows 2000.
    Thanks so much!

  6. Albert Says:
    January 24th, 2011 at 10:41 pm

    After much frustration trying different solutions, this worked perfectly. Thanks !

  7. mikoto Says:
    March 11th, 2011 at 6:19 am

    Can someone please help me?
    I installed the sound drivers, DX and VM tools. Everything seems to work perfectly. I’ve got sound and high resolution display. But when I start a game (I tried Dungeon Keeper and NFS2SE), it turned to be very choppy and the computer responds only every few seconds. And when it does respond, it was very fast. It’s like a rush, freeze, rush, freeze cycle. The graphics are reduced to 16bit and there was no sound. I’m running VMWare 7.1.3 on Windows 7 64bit, and my VM is a Windows 98 SE.

  8. admin Says:
    March 19th, 2011 at 11:11 am

    Have you tried turning on the graphics acceleration in Windows 98 to full, and closing all other programs (other than VMWare in your host)?

    The specifications of your host computer might also make a difference.

  9. k-dave Says:
    August 11th, 2011 at 5:01 am

    “THUMPS UP !”

    Perfect instructions, by the end, IT WORKS ON WIN XP too !!

  10. mike Says:
    December 26th, 2011 at 1:18 am

    Disculpa pero ahi dices ejecutar

    SBPCI_WebDrvsV5_12_01.exe

    pero donde esta ese archivo o donde lo conseguimos. Te agradecere la informacion.
    Tambien tengo problema que no se actualiza mi MVware.aunque puedo ver paginas pero no se puede actualizar tools ni el programa, porque sera?

  11. admin Says:
    January 2nd, 2012 at 8:41 pm

    @mike:

    SBPCI_WebDrvsV5_12_01.exe is the Creative Ensoniq AudioPCI driver, and can be found from the Creative site e.g.

    http://support.creative.com/Products/ProductDetails.aspx?catID=1&subCatID=207&prodID=420&prodName=Ensoniq%20AudioPCI&subCatName=Others&CatName=Sound+Blaster

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