ESS DirectX Driver Upgrade Installation Dec. 15, 1995 ESS Technology, Inc. Overview This note shows a procedure for PC users to upgrade ESS device drivers from versions v.4.01.xx (including release v.4.01.07), to upgrade to version 4.03.xx. This ESS device driver upgrade enables new PCs with ESS audio devices to run new Games using Microsoft's DirectSound audio capability. Installing New Drivers The following are stepwise procedures for installing new ESS AudioDrive drivers with DirectX DirectSound support. Under Windows 95, perform right mouse click on "My Computer" to bring up the "System Properties" dialog box. Select "Device manager", double click on "Sound, video and game controllers", this should display the "ESS ESxx88 AudioDrive" , where ESxx88 refers to ES488, ES1488, ES688, or ES1688 AudioDrive, depending on your sound device. Double click on the "ESS ESxx88 AudioDrive" to bring up the "ESS ESxx88 AudioDrive Properties" dialog box. Select "Driver" to show the driver files, click the "Change Driver" button, this will bring up the "Select Device" dialog box. Click the "Have Disk..." button, insert the AudioDrive drivers disk in floppy drive and enter the appropriate drive letter in the "Install From Disk" dialog box, click "OK". This should bring up another "Select Device" dialog box with the "ESS ESxx88 AudioDrive" selected, click the "OK" button. Click the "OK" button on the "ESS ESxx88 AudioDrive Properties" dialog box the click the "Close" button on the "System Properties" dialog box. Restart your PC. Technical Summary As of this writing, applications using Windows95 DirectX will introduce Microsoft DirectX drivers to the system in situations where older drivers or drivers with no DirectX support are found. Microsoft DirectX install does not properly install these drivers in situations where the AudioDrive v.4.01.xx (for ES488, ES1488, ES688, ES1688) is on the system due to differences in driver builds. This in turn causes the system to lose sound or in certain cases cause GPFs. ESS is providing a newer build of AudioDrive drivers to fix this problem, v.4.03.02 or later will include DirectX DirectSound support. Additional Notes On DirectX Current DirectX installation will still prompt the user to replace existing audio drivers with DirectX drivers after AudioDrive v.4.03.02 has been updated. This is another error in DirectX implementation as it will replace the ESFM.DRV with the older ESSFM.DRV file. It seems that DirectX is looking for this by filename and not objectively. Choosing "No" is recommended to keep ESFM support for the on chip synthesizer. Choosing "Yes" will not be catastrophic, the user will simply be installing ESSFM.DRV which provides lower grade OPL-3 emulation support on the ESxx88, repeating the steps above will install the ESFM driver again. "The Hive" is a Windows 95 DirectX application and is used to test this problem, choosing "Better" or "Best" for graphics display mode will cause DirectDraw to fail, this is non-ESS related. The DXSETUP.EXE file on the CD is 12,288 bytes and dated 9-28-95.Download Driver Pack
After your driver has been downloaded, follow these simple steps to install it.
Expand the archive file (if the download file is in zip or rar format).
If the expanded file has an .exe extension, double click it and follow the installation instructions.
Otherwise, open Device Manager by right-clicking the Start menu and selecting Device Manager.
Find the device and model you want to update in the device list.
Double-click on it to open the Properties dialog box.
From the Properties dialog box, select the Driver tab.
Click the Update Driver button, then follow the instructions.
Very important: You must reboot your system to ensure that any driver updates have taken effect.
For more help, visit our Driver Support section for step-by-step videos on how to install drivers for every file type.