I have a PC with a GF4 AGP and Voodoo 3 PCI.
Or another system with both a Yamaha and Audigy soundcard.

As I want to use both bits of hardware, just as different times I'll typically just change the primary device in control panel, I only disable if games ignore the primary device setting.

I have a number of PC's with ISA and PCI soundcards. half the time I won't bother installing the ISA card drivers in windows as I know I'll only ever use it in dos.
I still disable the "unknown device" but only because a cross looks cleaner then escalation mark.

Both Win98 and XP support hardware profiles, so you could create separate hardware profiles with the devices you want active.

Disabling the device in Device Manager is better than not installing drivers, because that would speed access to that hardware when needed (if it's just in as "Unknown Device" you'd have to repeatedly install the driver at such time as you wanted to use it. Sounds like a real hassle.)

You MIGHT run into a situation where XP wants to assign a PnP device to a different IRQ from Win98, so be careful to force those configurations to match to prevent device conflicts from randomly occuring (with the *enabled* hardware, of course).

AlaricD wrote on 2024-02-29, 22:48:

Both Win98 and XP support hardware profiles, so you could create separate hardware profiles with the devices you want active.

This

You MIGHT run into a situation where XP wants to assign a PnP device to a different IRQ from Win98, so be careful to force those configurations to match to prevent device conflicts from randomly occuring (with the *enabled* hardware, of course).

In the BIOS you can manually assign IRQs to PCI slots to keep that from happening.

AlaricD wrote on 2024-02-29, 22:48:

Both Win98 and XP support hardware profiles, so you could create separate hardware profiles with the devices you want active.

Disabling the device in Device Manager is better than not installing drivers, because that would speed access to that hardware when needed (if it's just in as "Unknown Device" you'd have to repeatedly install the driver at such time as you wanted to use it. Sounds like a real hassle.)

In my case I'm looking to have specific devices permanently disabled in the respective operating system installs.

Is there any difference between installing a driver and then disabling the device, versus not installing it and disabling the unknown device?

chinny22 wrote on 2024-02-29, 22:45:

I have a number of PC's with ISA and PCI soundcards. half the time I won't bother installing the ISA card drivers in windows as I know I'll only ever use it in dos.
I still disable the "unknown device" but only because a cross looks cleaner then escalation mark.

I'm leaning towards this as a solution. For example, I have LAN ports I didn't want to install drivers for, so I suppose just disabling the unknown LAN device wouldn't hurt.

I'm curious if there is any potential downsides to not installing a driver for a device I didn't want to use in the first place.

There's the odd annoying piece of hardware that will just keep trying to work while it can and you gotta install the driver to say "Siddown and shaddap" ... I'm in that sitch on one stupid laptop where I been putting off installing some gargantuan "mouse suite" to actually be able to turn off the touchpad, when I think it will just annoy me for the crap it sets for the external mouse.

kingcake wrote on 2024-02-29, 23:18:

AlaricD wrote on 2024-02-29, 22:48:

You MIGHT run into a situation where XP wants to assign a PnP device to a different IRQ from Win98, so be careful to force those configurations to match to prevent device conflicts from randomly occuring (with the *enabled* hardware, of course).

In the BIOS you can manually assign IRQs to PCI slots to keep that from happening.

I've occasionally seen it with ISA cards, though. Often, the BIOS can keep control of assignments PCI bus and the OSes will follow its lead, but ISA slots can be a different story. I guess I had it in my mind that a dual-boot Win98/XP might be set up with an ISA audio card for Win98 gaming, and PCI audio for XP-- but now I realize OP hasn't detailed what motherboard and cards he's working with.

Also, the ACPI HAL can just ignore the BIOS settings and do what it wants with the PCI IRQs.

AlaricD wrote on 2024-03-01, 14:56:

I guess I had it in my mind that a dual-boot Win98/XP might be set up with an ISA audio card for Win98 gaming, and PCI audio for XP-- but now I realize OP hasn't detailed what motherboard and cards he's working with.

I can add some context.

I'm currently working on a multi-OS build (DOS/Win95/Win98/WinXP) with an Asus PBS533-E motherboard / Pentium 4 build. It will have three sound cards including an ESS Solo-1, Diamond Monster Sound MX300 and Audigy 2 ZS.

For Win95, I want to have the ESS Solo-1 and MX300 installed and active. Audigy 2 ZS will be disabled.

For WinXP, I want to have the Audigy 2 ZS enabled, but ESS Solo-1 and MX300 disabled. In performing the Windows XP install, it automatically installed the wrong ESS drivers, since there are no drivers for the Solo-1 (ES1938S) that I'm aware of.

For Windows 98, I'm testing a scenario using two Win98 installs: one for the ESS Solo-1 and MX300 and the other for the ESS Solo-1 and Audigy 2 ZS.

I was thinking about just doing different hardware profiles, but since I want to use different games with A3D versus EAX, I figured having two independent Win 98 setups might be cleaner overall.

For the cards I'm not using in each respective install, I'm curious if there are any downsides to just not installing drivers and disabling the detected hardware in the Device Manager. Or might there be a reason to install the drivers first, then disable the hardware.

The other hardware I'm looking at not installing are LAN drivers. I originally tested a Win98 install with the LAN drivers, but it resulted in significant increase in boot times. I'm thinking of just leaving those uninstalled and the LAN device disabled to keep things running faster.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-02-29, 23:35:

There's the odd annoying piece of hardware that will just keep trying to work while it can and you gotta install the driver to say "Siddown and shaddap" ... I'm in that sitch on one stupid laptop where I been putting off installing some gargantuan "mouse suite" to actually be able to turn off the touchpad, when I think it will just annoy me for the crap it sets for the external mouse.

That's certainly a valid use case for installing drivers to then disable hardware. Though I imagine figuring out which hardware would need drivers installed to otherwise not be an issue would take some trial and error.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-03-01, 15:13:

I can add some context. […]
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AlaricD wrote on 2024-03-01, 14:56:

I guess I had it in my mind that a dual-boot Win98/XP might be set up with an ISA audio card for Win98 gaming, and PCI audio for XP-- but now I realize OP hasn't detailed what motherboard and cards he's working with.

I can add some context.

I'm currently working on a multi-OS build (DOS/Win95/Win98/WinXP) with an Asus PBS533-E motherboard / Pentium 4 build. It will have three sound cards including an ESS Solo-1, Diamond Monster Sound MX300 and Audigy 2 ZS.

For Win95, I want to have the ESS Solo-1 and MX300 installed and active. Audigy 2 ZS will be disabled.

For WinXP, I want to have the Audigy 2 ZS enabled, but ESS Solo-1 and MX300 disabled. In performing the Windows XP install, it automatically installed the wrong ESS drivers, since there are no drivers for the Solo-1 (ES1938S) that I'm aware of.

For Windows 98, I'm testing a scenario using two Win98 installs: one for the ESS Solo-1 and MX300 and the other for the ESS Solo-1 and Audigy 2 ZS.

Ok, so that's definitely a good blend of PCI and ISA audio cards going.

I was thinking about just doing different hardware profiles, but since I want to use different games with A3D versus EAX, I figured having two independent Win 98 setups might be cleaner overall.

A single install with hardware profiles may yet be cleaner, as separate versions may become unwieldy with satisfying .DLL/.VXD dependencies and making sure the Registries are aligned with respect to certain software installations.

For the cards I'm not using in each respective install, I'm curious if there are any downsides to just not installing drivers and disabling the detected hardware in the Device Manager. Or might there be a reason to install the drivers first, then disable the hardware.

I'd have them installed with drivers, then disabled. This way, depending on the hardware profile you load, you can have those items you want enabled and ready to go, and the other items disabled. Less hassle than with multiple Win9x installs.

The other hardware I'm looking at not installing are LAN drivers. I originally tested a Win98 install with the LAN drivers, but it resulted in significant increase in boot times. I'm thinking of just leaving those uninstalled and the LAN device disabled to keep things running faster.

The boot times should improve if you turn off the Client for Microsoft Networks (because that will try to find a logon server) and statically assign an IPv4 address/DNS/gateway instead of using DHCP. You probably won't need NetBEUI and IPX/SPX enabled, either.

AlaricD wrote on 2024-03-01, 16:16:

A single install with hardware profiles may yet be cleaner, as separate versions may become unwieldy with satisfying .DLL/.VXD dependencies and making sure the Registries are aligned with respect to certain software installations.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this?

Having two distinct installs should in theory be no different than having two entirely different Windows 98 computers, just with different software (e.g. games) installed on each.

The boot times should improve if you turn off the Client for Microsoft Networks (because that will try to find a logon server) and statically assign an IPv4 address/DNS/gateway instead of using DHCP. You probably won't need NetBEUI and IPX/SPX enabled, either.

I'll do some testing and see how that goes. I've got a test install on a CF card for this system, so I'm going to use it to try out different driver configs.

Also, the ACPI HAL can just ignore the BIOS settings and do what it wants with the PCI IRQs.

Interesting. Good to know.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-03-01, 18:12:

AlaricD wrote on 2024-03-01, 16:16:

A single install with hardware profiles may yet be cleaner, as separate versions may become unwieldy with satisfying .DLL/.VXD dependencies and making sure the Registries are aligned with respect to certain software installations.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this?

Two Windows directories with their own ~\SYSTEM directory and their own Registries and .INI files and all that. In some cases you might need to install the same game or software twice because they may need Registry entries to run properly. .DLLs, .OCXs, and .VXDs can also just get mismatched. The whole point of hardware profiles is for the ease of using a computer whose hardware configurations change frequently, whether a desktop with multiple audio cards or a laptop being used with a docking station. You're saving time, effort, hard disk space, and your sanity.

AlaricD wrote on 2024-03-04, 20:05:

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-03-01, 18:12:

AlaricD wrote on 2024-03-01, 16:16:

A single install with hardware profiles may yet be cleaner, as separate versions may become unwieldy with satisfying .DLL/.VXD dependencies and making sure the Registries are aligned with respect to certain software installations.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this?

Two Windows directories with their own ~\SYSTEM directory and their own Registries and .INI files and all that. In some cases you might need to install the same game or software twice because they may need Registry entries to run properly. .DLLs, .OCXs, and .VXDs can also just get mismatched. The whole point of hardware profiles is for the ease of using a computer whose hardware configurations change frequently, whether a desktop with multiple audio cards or a laptop being used with a docking station. You're saving time, effort, hard disk space, and your sanity.

For clarity, I'm talking about installing two instances of Windows 98 on two separate partitions that are completely hidden from each other. It's like having two different Windows computers.

The only common thing between installs will be drivers for common hardware (motherboard, GPU, etc.), and possibility a couple utilities. It's also not a configuration that would be changing frequently. Once all drivers are installed and stable, I'd just be installing a handful of games under each install. I'm also not sure why I'd be installing the same games on both installs? That's not the intent here.

In experimenting with this I have also come across reasons to have separate Windows installs, mainly the extra software needed for different sound cards. With the Audigy 2 ZS, there are a bunch of Creative Labs utilities for things like speaker setup, EAX, sound font management, etc. And the Diamond Monster Sound MX300 has its own utility for managing speaker setup, A3D, etc.

Having these applications on different Windows installs could make the respective installs cleaner.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-03-04, 20:18:

For clarity, I'm talking about installing two instances of Windows 98 on two separate partitions that are completely hidden from each other. It's like having two different Windows computers.
Having these applications on different Windows installs could make the respective installs cleaner.

I mean, it's your time and storage device.

AlaricD wrote on 2024-03-04, 20:29:

I mean, it's your time and storage device.

TBH, the biggest time sink has been trying to get multiple sound cards installed and configured all in one system in the first place. If I was at all worried about my time, I wouldn't even be doing this. 😉

ISA and PCI has never caused me any issue but can imagine creative EAX and Vortex A3D card's not playing nice together.
Never done such a setup myself, that's the perfect excuse to run up a entire new PC 😀

The problem with using an Audigy (or SBLive) card together with an Aureal Vortex 2 is that both sets of drivers support A3D and come with their own .DLL files. Obviously, you want the Vortex card to handle this, but I'm not sure how installing both drivers at the same time would affect that.

For that reason, I go with separate Windows installations for each card. It just feels cleaner.

Good point about the A3D.DLL file(s).

I've read about people using batch files or keeping backup copies of A3D.DLL to manage multiple sound cards.

I feel this is just another reason to have separate Windows setups for each card.