Subscriber Ray Owens wrote this week because he as having sound problems:
Dear Terry,
When I go to Yahoo Chat a box comes up and says,
{The computer’s audio mixer could not be initialized}
I e-mailed Yahoo Help and they e-mailed back saying there’s nothing they could do.
Is there anything I can do?
Thank you,
Ray Owens.
It sounds to me like Yahoo Chat is looking for a particular Windows driver interface for the audio & and that Ray’s sound card, or his computer’s built-in sound circuitry, is not providing it.
In a circumstance like this, I would probably drop the idea of using Yahoo Chat. I might drop it completely, or look for an alternative solution.
There’s a third-party software package that is supposed to work with Yahoo Chat. I’ve used the program (Trillian), but I haven’t used it for voice chatting. Trillian is designed to chat using the AOL Instant Messenger system, the Yahoo Chat System, the MSN Messenger system, ICQ, and IRC (Internet Relay Chat).
See Trillian’s feature list, audio chat page
Trillian is available in a free version and also a paid version from www.trillian.cc. Trillian was my Shareware/Freeware Pick of the Week last year in my July 18, 2005 issue.
If that doesn’t work, and if you really want to chat, you might try an add-in sound card.
Sometimes you can find them on sale cheap. Try searching for “sound card” on the buy.com and/or amazon.com search boxes on my homepage at Terry’s Computer Tips.
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