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Release Date: 8-Jan-2001

The information in this article applies to Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition.

Overview:

• Mouse or whole system freezes for several seconds every few minutes or so.
• System becomes unresponsive for a second or more (e.g. clicking on a folder or icon does not immediately open that folder or run the application).
• The system time shown on the task bar is losing time. Over a 24-hour period this may be by as much as 2-4 hours or even more.
• System becomes very unresponsive and ‘slow’ and eventually gives ‘blue-screen’ exceptions.

These symptoms can be reproduced by any application that repeatedly plays .wav files. For instance, if the Underwater screen saver is run for 24 hours, or if sound applications are constantly being used. The problem can be temporarily cleared by Restarting Windows.

Systems affected are those containing the following mainboards, MX3WL, MX3WproV, MX3WproE, MX3S, D1170 and any other mainboard that uses WDM audio drivers.

Procedure:

Microsoft have acknowledged that there is a problem with some standard drivers released in Windows 98 Second Edition. See http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q242/9/37.ASP

RM have obtained the hotfix files – Click here to download the hotfix file Q242937.exe.

Status:

RM have confirmed this to be a problem in the Microsoft products listed at the beginning of this article. This problem is reproducible on RM MX3WL, MX3Wproe, MX3WproV, MX3S and D1170 mainboards. Any mainboard which is using WDM audio drivers and Windows 98SE may exhibit these symptoms.

RM have changed their standard pre-installed software to include the fixed drivers. The new drivers are available from the RM web-site at http://www1.rm.com/support/drivers/   Note: Win98SE RM Recovery CDs with a Part Number of AD338 or T3003 do not contain the new drivers.

More Information:

The VXD based drivers used for Windows 95 can be used on Windows 98SE and do not have this problem.

The new WDM hot fixfiles are:

   Date       Time       Version    Size     File name   

   ------------------------------------------------------

   3/21/2000  8:34:03pm  4.10.2223  137,312  Kmixer.sys  

   3/21/2000  8:34:03pm  4.10.2223  169,376  Portcls.sys 

   3/21/2000  8:34:04pm  4.10.2224   41,568  Usbaudio.sys

   3/21/2000  8:34:04pm  4.10.2225   69,120  Wdmaud.sys 

The essential hotfix file for this problem is WDMAUD.SYS (the original Win98SE version has a date of  23/04/99 22:22).

To determine if this fix is already applied, check the C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS folder to see which version of the above files are present.

Keywords: Losing time, system freezing, slow performance UnderWater slow losing time freezing WDMAUD.SYS WDM Windows 98SE Audio WDMAUD.SYS Underwater screen saver Audio