Troubleshooting - Problems with sound

Troubleshooting – Problems with sound

If you cannot hear the sound effects while you’re playing Four Winds, do the following:

Make sure you have enabled sound effects by checking the Sound Effects command on the Options menu of Four Winds.
Make sure you have installed the Four Winds wave resource file (4wwave.dll) in the Four Winds program folder. If not, reinstall Four Winds.
Make sure you have a wave device installed, configured and operational. Try to play Tada.wav or another system wave file using Media Player or some other wave player.
Make sure that device’s mixer settings (Wave Out and Wave Output Level) are correct. Mixer settings are controlled by Volume Control or by a proprietary mixer application (this control can normally be accessed by double clicking the loudspeaker icon on the right side of Windows taskbar). If the settings are incorrect, re-adjust and try to play a .wav file again.
Open Control Panel and double click the Multimedia applet and click Advanced tab and then expand Audio Compression Codecs (on Windows XP, double click Sounds and Audio Devices, activate the Hardware tab and double click Audio Codecs and activate the Properties tab). Make sure that Microsoft IMA ADPCM Codec and Microsoft ADPCM Codec audio compression drivers have been installed. If so, check the Properties of both drivers and make sure they are enabled. Wave files that come with Four Winds are 4-bit compressed .WAV files. You cannot play them unless you have support for audio compression on your system. If the required audio codecs are not installed, please follow instructions at the bottom of this page.

If the program hangs when the splash screen is displayed or in the middle of the game when a sound effect should play:

To locate the problem, quit Four Winds if it is running, and move 4wwave.dll in your Four Winds program folder temporarily to another folder. Then restart Four Winds and see if the problem has disappeared. If it has not, it is obvious that the reason for the problem is not sound related. Try to solve the problem with other troubleshooters. Otherwise continue with the next step.
Click Start, Settings, Control Panel and double click the System applet.
Choose the Device Manager tab and expand the "Sound, video and game controllers" group. Check that there are no double installations of any of the devices listed. If there are, remove extraneous drivers, then restart your system and see whether the problem has disappeared. Otherwise continue with the next step.
Check that no conflicts are reported. These are indicated by a yellow exclamation mark beside the icon of the device. If there are, double click the device in question and choose the Resources tab to see which is the conflicting device. Try to resolve the conflict by using another configuration scheme (in the Setting based on list), or by specifying non-conflicting resources manually. Then restart your system and see whether the problem has disappeared. If there are no conflicts, continue with the next step.
Double click the item that represents your sound device to display its properties. If you see a Settings tab, click it and see whether you have an option for Full-Duplex. If you have, this option is most probably enabled. Full-Duplex controls ability to play and record simultaneously and should have nothing to do with the problem, but if turning off or on Full-Duplex seems to fix the problem, it is likely that your sound drivers are incorrectly configured or corrupt. In this case you should remove all your sound drivers using the method described in step 3 above, restart your system and let Windows recognize the sound devices and re-install the drivers.
Before doing that, it is suggested that you make notes of the resources your sound device is currently using (this information can be found on the Resources tab of the Properties dialog box) – Input/Output ranges, DMA and IRQ. This information may prove helpful if Windows fails to automatically recognize your sound device and you need to re-install the sound device manually (by using the Add New Hardware Wizard of Control Panel).
If you still have problems with the sound, please check (from the web site of the manufacturer of your sound card) that your drivers are up-to-date. It may well be that an updated driver resolves the problem. If your driver is up-to-date, you can try if uninstalling and reinstalling all sound drivers resolves the problem.
If nothing seems to help, please contact technical support.

Installing support for Microsoft IMA ADPCM Codec and Microsoft ADPCM Codec

All Windows operating systems have these audio codecs included in the default installation. If they have not been installed, you can do so manually by doing the following:

If you have Windows Windows 95 or 98 (probably applies to Me and Windows NT 4.0, too):

Choose Start>Settings>Control Panel.
Double click Add/Remove Programs.
Activate the Windows Setup tab.
Select Multimedia and click Details.
Make sure Audio Compression is checked, then click OK.
Click OK to close the Add/Remove Programs dialog box. Windows will install the support for the needed audio codecs. You may need to restart your computer before the codecs work properly.

If you have Windows XP:

Choose Start>Control Panel and double click Add hardware, then click Next.
Click Yes, I have already connected the hardware and click Next.
Select Audio Codecs in the list of installed hardware.
If you did not have previously any audio codecs installed in the system, you should select Audio Codecs in the list of devices and click Next. This should install support for the needed sound compression schemes. Stop following this procedure at this point.
On the other hand, if you do have support for some audio codecs it is likely that you need to go on with the procedure below.
Choose Add a new hardware device at the bottom of the list and click Next.
Click Install the hardware that I manually select from a list (Advanced), and click Next.
Select Sound, video and game controllers and click Next.
Select (Standard system devices) and click Have Disk.
Click Browse in the Install From Disk dialog box and open the folder C:\Windows\System32.
You should see here mmdriver.inf. Select it and click Open.
Click OK in the Install From Disk dialog box.
If you see a warning about logo compatibility, just click Continue Anyway.
Now you should finally see a list of audio codecs. Amongst the other items, you should find Microsoft ADPCM Audio Codec and IMA ADPCM Audio Codec. You need to install them one by one so select either of these and click Next. This should re-install the codec (you may need your Windows XP CD and might need to restart the computer before the codec works). Repeat the procedure for each codec for which you need support (for Four Winds, install the above mentioned two).

If the system slows down significantly after you have played few deals and the problem persist even if you exit Four Winds

The problem might be related to your sound card's incapability to handl the default dual sound system used by Four Winds, according to which the sound effects are played by the Window multimedia sub system, and the background music and win of the game tune by DirectX sound system. You should first check if an updated driver fixes the problem, but if nothing else helps, you can bypass DirectX as the sound system to correct the error:

In Four Winds, choose File>Prefences.
On the General option page under the User Interface section, check the Bypass DirectX sound box.
Exit Four Winds and start it again (if you have experienced problem, it is recommended that you also reboot your machine). DirectX is now bypassed and the background music (these can only be MIDI files now) and win of the game tune are now played by using Windows multimedia sub system instead of DirectX.