I posted this same message (heartfelt cry for help) in the LucasArts forum but this forum seems a lot more active...
I have to disable sound to get KotOR 2 to load up and run. If I do not disable sound, then I see the mouse arrow icon turn to an arrow icon with an hourglass for a second, and then nothing except swkotor2.exe is listed in the processes of task manager.
I have upgraded to 1.02b, and installed the HQ music and movie files. However, this problem existed with the non-updated executable.
I have also tried copying mss32.dll (Miles Sound System?) from my KotOR 1 directory to my KotOR 2 directory (as suggested in various places around the net) which did not fix the problem. I also tried using the 'Force Software Sound' option which did not fix the problem. I have also selected all four settings of Audio Hardware Acceleration under the Windows Audio Advanced Properties tab. None of the four worked.
I have a Dell XPS m1710 w/ a GTX 7950 and the latest Dell approved nVidia driver for the 7950. The XPS laptop uses a Sigmatel audio chip, and I don't know the driver version, but I'm not changing it since the other 100 or so installed games work fine (including Neverwinter Nights 2 and expansion pack which was also developed by Obsidian using the same game engine). The machine is running XP MCE with SP2 and DirectX is 9.0c.
Does anyone know a way to get sound back on a machine configured similar to mine running XP? The game isn't as much fun without sound and not near as impressive.
And it's frustrating that my hardware which runs everything from DOS games under DosBox through the Wing Commander series to Warcraft 3 to Bioshock, can't run this game with sound. I hate to point fingers, but that doesn't seem like my fault or Dell's fault or Sigmatel's fault.
Please help...and please don't ask me to put (3) pages worth of system info up on this thread. I will not update drivers since I have games with release dates on either side of KotOR 2 that work fine.
The problem is with the game trying to initialize its sound system on my hardware. I'm just hoping someone else figured out a workaround (some obscure .ini setting) besides the mss32.dll copy trick (which seems primarily intended for Vista).
Thanks for any help,
Dave