Vobis Contessa PC

Texture Problems in Certain Games

Games such as Tomb Raider may lose some of the textures. This is due to a lack of texture memory on the 2Mb Video card. These games require at least 4Mb to run correctly with hardware accelleration. Run the game in "software" mode (i.e. no hardware accelleration) to fix the problem.

Sound Problems

Despite checking everything, there is still no sound coming from the machine. Enter BIOS (either press DEL or CTRL-ALT-ESC depending on the BIOS) and change the parallel port from ECP (which uses DMA3) to EPP (which doesn't) and when the machine gets back into Windows, the sound should be back.

If that doesn't work, then go into Device Manager. If Device Mangler shows the sound card as having a problem, but the resources tab reports no conflicts, try changing the Basic Configuration to 0002.

Audio CDs - No Sound

Go into the Volume Controls, and make sure the Mute Box for the CDROM is not ticked, and the slider is around half way up (If you cannot see the CDROM slider, go into Options and Properties, and tick the box).

If after checking all the volume levels, Music CDs still will not play, go into Device Manager, and check the properties for the CD ROM drive, and make sure that "Option for DMA" setting is not ticked.

Reinstalling Sound Software

To remove and reinstall the sound software, follow these steps -

• In the BIOS setup check that the parallel port is in EPP mode. This step may be all that is needed to get sound.
• Activate 'Add/Remove Programs'. Uninstall 'AD18xxUnInstall' if present. Click OK to 'The Terra Tec TT1816 driver will be removed from the system!!!'
• Activate 'Device Manager'. Remove all entries in 'Sound, Video and Games Controllers' if present. Check for 'Analoge Devices AD1816' in 'Other Devices'. Remove if present.
• Restart Windows. the message 'Disk labelled AD1815/16 Driver Diskette now required. Insert CD and click OK.
• New hardware found. Click Browse, select driver and then Win95 folder on CD. Double click on folder, click OK and driver will be installed and sound work.

No Speaker Icon on Taskbar

Go into Control Panel, and then Multimedia. Make sure that the preferred Playback Device is set to the correct soundcard (usually a mixture of letters and numbers), and then tick the box "Show Volume Control on the Taskbar". Click on OK, and it should be back.