The solution only worked for almost a couple months, then the distortions returned. I've installed into 3 Guest XP SP3 virtual machines and 1 Guest XP SP2 virtual machine and all is working beautifully. Open 'Playback Control' (right click sound icon in task bar) and set volume levels (most will be maxed) to a reasonable level. Under 'Sounds' tab, change Sound scheme back to 'Windows Default', choose an event and test. Under 'Volume' tab, check 'Place volume icon in the taskbar' (because the install unchecks it). Go to 'Control Panel' ~ 'Sounds and Audio Devices'. When the VM comes back up, under Device Manager the 'Creative AudioPCI (ES1371,ES1373) (WDM)' device will have been replace by 'SB PCI(WDM)'. In the VM with guest WinXP, install the driver, reboot when asked - there will be no shutdown sound. I have found a solution !!! Go here to Ensoniq Corporation Ensoniq AudioPCI ES1371 Free Driver Download for Windows XP - EnsoniqAudioPCIES1.ĭownload 'EnsoniqAutioPCIES1371XPDriver.exe' to your MasterDisks location. However, I will look through Creative's web site and see if I can find one that does work.

The driver 'SBPCI_WebDrvsV5_12_01' was 10x worse. This package is meant for Sound Blaster® Vibra128, Sound Blaster 16 PCI, Sound Blaster PCI 128, Sound Blaster 4.1 Digital, and Sound Blaster Ensoniq AudioPCI users running Windows 98SE, Windows ME, Windows 2000 and Windows XP, who experienced distortion problem when playing a wave or MP3 file in 4 speaker mode. The interesting description of the download (if you select Others, 16 PCI under Archived Products list) to see the download details. I suggest try it first in one of your 8 XP VMs and backup first before updating though I don't think anything serious side-effects would result from the update. If you install the updated driver (it will ask for reboot after install), the description of the sound device becomes SB PCI and the driver is sbpci.sys version 5. There is simply no consistent pattern/repeatable steps to reproduce the distortion.

sometimes Windows logon sound is distorted, sometimes not, sometimes it is just Windows logoff, sometimes both, sometimes neither is distorted).

I don't know whether it fixes the problem as I rarely power up the XP VM that I have and the distorted sound is intermittent (e.g. You could try installing an update downloaded from the Creative website (although it is from late 2002).

The device driver (es1371mp.sys) is version dating back to mid-2001 from the standard XP driver set. I don't think the device driver comes from the VMware Tools. The sound device presented in an XP VM is a Creative AudioPCI Ensoniq 1371.

Windows xp sp3 no sound