MSI Sound Effect Manager removal

January 11, 2012 · Posted in Windows · Comment 

I’ve personally suffered from MSI’s Sound Effect manager’s weird behavior on Windows 7: the sound effects are on even if they are disabled. Re-installing the drive from Reaktek did not help either. I know the Sound Effect manager is a legacy control panel application, thus it was a possibility this to happen…

Searching on internet did not really help. After suffering almost whole day, I was finally able to fix the problem.

Here’s what I did.

  1. Disable AC97 device from bios.
  2. reboot (naturally)
  3. deleted entries from registry via regedit.exe
    1. (Make sure you make export of appropriate registry section each time.)
    2. download PsTools from Microsoft’s Sysinternals.
    3. run regedit.exe via psexec.exe:
      • psexec -s -i -d c:\windows\regedit.exe
    4. delete following entries in the registory:
      • [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Control Panel\Extended Properties\{305CA226-D286-468e-B848-2B2E8E697B74} 2]
      • “%SystemRoot%\\system32\\ALSNDMGR.CPL”=dword:00000004
      • [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Control Panel\Extended Properties\{305CA226-D286-468e-B848-2B2E8E697B74} 2]
      • “%SystemRoot%\\system32\\ALSNDMGR.CPL”=dword:00000004
      • [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Setup\PnpLockdownFiles]
      • “%SystemPath%\\system32\\drivers\\RTKVAC.SYS”=dword:00000005
      • “%SystemPath%\\SOUNDMAN.EXE”=dword:00000005
      • “%SystemPath%\\system32\\ALSNDMGR.CPL”=dword:00000005
      • “%SystemPath%\\system32\\ALSNDMGR.WAV”=dword:00000005
      • “%SystemPath%\\system32\\RTLCPL.EXE”=dword:00000005
      • “%SystemPath%\\system32\\RTLCPAPI.dll”=dword:00000005
      • “%SystemPath%\\system32\\RtkCfg.dll”=dword:00000005
      • “%SystemPath%\\system32\\RtkAPO.dll”=dword:00000005
      • “%SystemPath%\\system32\\RtkPgExt.dll”=dword:00000005
      • [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers]
      • “C:\\Windows\\System32\\ALSNDMGR.CPL”=”RUNASADMIN”
      • [HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-3750584346-3454113483-1130964700-1000\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Compatibility Assistant\Persisted]
      • “C:\\Windows\\System32\\ALSNDMGR.CPL”=dword:00000010
      • [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run]
      • “SoundMan”=”SOUNDMAN.EXE”
  4. and deleted the files mentioned in the deleted registry values.

After this, restart the computer and re-enable the AC97. Windows should automatically re-configure the sound device.

Good luck!

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Windows 7: Where is the Wordpad?

October 1, 2010 · Posted in Windows · Comment 

Every time when I open some Unix/Linux formatted (different newline format than Windows) text file on Windows’ desktop, I have to find the WordPad.exe when the Windows pop-up asks “Windows can’t open this file” and “What do you want to do?.”

I would select “Select a program from a list of installed programs.”

I could open from the list but it is not listed, then I have to browse it. Where is it?

Well, at least for Windows 7, it is in: C:\Program Files\Windows NT\Accessories as “wordpad.exe”

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Windows 7 & Vista: Cannot find the files saved on C drive

July 12, 2010 · Posted in Windows · 1 Comment 

We received a few calls from clients stating that they cannot find files they saved and are very sure that they did.

They also tried to change the folder (and search) option to show hidden files including system files and none of them worked…

Well, this is due to the Windows’ “virtualization” feature as some of the symptom are explained in kb927387. Basically Windows monitors certain directories under C drive (Windows installation drive). Anything written under such directories would be re-directed to c:\Users\<userid>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore

You should be able to find those files there.

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