Installing a speaker driver
û Jason Venz A If you donÆt have a sound card and a decent pair of speakers, you will never enjoy the full power of multimedia sound, but that doesnÆt mean you have to settle for the humble "beep". For Windows 95 users, Microsoft provides a sound driver which enables your PC speaker to play .wav files (if you want to play .avi, .mid or other sound files, youÆre out of luck). Once you get this driver up and running, you will find that your PC speaker can successfully mimic a wind-up gramophone playing old 78s. Sound enticing? Then read on! To install the speaker driver, download speak.exe from ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/Softlib/Mslfiles/ (or from this month's cover CD) and execute it to extract the driver files. Run the Add New Hardware applet (StartûControl PanelûAdd New Hardware) and click Next. When asked whether you want Windows to search for your new hardware, choose No and click Next again. From the resulting list of hardware types, choose Sound, video and game controllers, click Next and then Have disk. In the Copy manufacturerÆs files from field, type in the path to the driver files and click OK. You will be prompted to restart your computer. [image: speaker.tif] The speaker driver doesnÆt let you fine-tune .wav file playback. However, you can access some rudimentary controls through the Control Panel. Choose StartûControl PanelûMultimediaûAdvancedûAudio Devices and double-click Audio for Sound Driver for PC Speaker to access speed and volume controls. û Neville Clarkson
Q Our PCs at work have only speakers, but they cannot be turned on ù the options in Windows 95 are greyed out. I remember seeing a driver somewhere that allowed the speaker to be used for something more than a simple beep, but can no longer find any reference to this.
Use the Add New Hardware applet to install MicrosoftÆs speaker driver
Category: hardware, Win95
Issue: May 1998