Ensoniq PCI Sound Card Experiences Static When Disk Is Accessed (183069)

SYMPTOMS

You have an EIDE/ATA hard drive and you have applied the fix mentioned in the following Knowledge Base article:

ARTICLE-ID: 153296
TITLE : Write Cache on IDE/ATAPI Disks Is Not Flushed on Shut Down

Your Ensoniq PCI Soundcard is experiencing static when the hard disk drive is accessed.

CAUSE

This problem is caused by a regression introduced in the fix mentioned in the above article. That hotfix includes two modifications to Atapi.sys. The first modification was to flush the write cache on the disk when the system is being shut down and the second added periodic flushes of the write cache by the file system. It is this second change that is causing the problem with the sound card. Because these flushes were being done synchronously, this was tying up the PCI bus long enough to prevent the Ensoniq driver from updating the synthesizer regularly. The fix to this problem was to make the flushes asynchronous, so they would not interfere with other drivers.

RESOLUTION

To resolve this problem, obtain the latest service pack for Windows NT 4.0 or Windows NT Server 4.0, Terminal Server Edition. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

152734 How to Obtain the Latest Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack

This fix is a replacement for the fix described in the following Knowledge Base article and should be used in its place:

ARTICLE-ID: 153296
TITLE : Write Cache on IDE/ATAPI Disks Is Not Flushed on Shut Down

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in Windows NT 4.0 and Windows NT Server 4.0, Terminal Server Edition. This problem was first corrected in Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4.0 and Windows NT Server 4.0, Terminal Server Edition Service Pack 4.