Alright, at first I had no sound after the plane crashed, but I found out that by switching to WinXP SP2 Compatibility Mode, I could get sound. The only problem is that it stutters a lot and crackles. It's completely random and the game runs perfectly fine even when the sound is stuttering. I'm running onboard Realtek HD Audio and my specs are:
Windows Vista Home Basic
3.45 GHz Intel Celeron D
1.5 GB RAM
256 MB GeForce 7600 GT

I also tried adding -dx9 to the shortcut reference but it did nothing at all. Downloaded today's audio drivers and the latest Nvidia Beta Drivers, so I'm all caught up there. Any suggestions as to what else I should do?

This message was edited by Lord Sion on Sep 10 2007.

Ok the issue is with your sound card drivers, the reason that installing the latest Realtek driver didn't work is because of the fact that the latest Realtek drivers have major issues with Bioshock. The solution is this (it's a big call but its necessary until they patch the game) you will need to uninstall the Realtek drivers and allow the game to run on Microsoft HD Audio.

However, if you do not wish to do this there is a variety of other things you can try. A guy from 2K actually showed me this one trick that supposedly fixes stuttering sound. You may as well try it.

Edit your default.ini. Put a semi-colon in front of AudioDevice=FMODAudio.FMODAudioSubsystem, and add the following line right after it:

AudioDevice=D3DDrv.D3DAudioDevice

After edits, that part of the config file should look like this:

;AudioDevice=FMODAudio.FMODAudioSubsystem
AudioDevice=D3DDrv.D3DAudioDevice

Save the file, try the game again.

How do I get the Microsoft drivers to take over when I get rid of the Realtek ones? Do I have to download and install them from somewhere? Editing the .ini file did nothing but just make my sound disappear completely...

These 2K guys are geniuses...

Actually I have a better idea that will help you. With my motherboard came Realtek HD Audio drivers on the motherboard disc, they are an old version of the drivers and I have never updated my drivers which is why mine works. I will upload the drivers off the CD to a website like box.net so you can download them. Hopefully that will work.

Lol, ok thanks. At least this is the only technical problem I'm having with the game...so far. I haven't gotten to the Medical Pavilion yet to see if it crashes there. I don't think it will though.

I have got the files for you (I am assuming you have a 32-bit OS?) and will upload them when I get a chance this afternoon. They are in a RAR file which is 23.2MB in size. I will probably have to upload them to rapidshare given their file size. Hopefully if this solves your issue then we can finally have a solution to this common problem.

Yeah, I got a 32-Bit OS, so I hope it works. If not, then it's back to the drawing board I suppose.

By the way do you have a copy of XP? Maybe on some re-installation discs that came with an old computer?

I had this problem and found it was caused by my master volume (in windows sound control) being set to 100%. Turned it down to 90% and all was good.

quote Evanescence15

By the way do you have a copy of XP? Maybe on some re-installation discs that came with an old computer?

I got a few of them. I don't know if they come with SP2 though...I can try making another petition and dual boot XP, although I'm not sure if those discs work with other computers. It's worth a try I suppose if I can find them all. I heard that playing the game in XP solves the problem, but XP is so ugly and I'd hate to use up HDD space and boot up another OS just to play a game that's supposed to be "optimized for Vista."

Also, my master volume was at like 66, but I turned it down to 50-something. I'm going to see if it helps any. I doubt it, but it's worth a try I guess.

Firstly the install discs will work. I installed XP on my current machine with install discs that have been reused several times and originally came with my DELL, several years ago. Secondly, it's actually worthwhile creating a small XP partition anyway as the amount of Vista incompatibility issues are ridiculous. That said, I love multi-boot systems as my computer has four OS's, two on each drive (XP/Vista on one drive and Ubuntu/OSX on the second). If anything this game will work better for you on XP as it is less hardware draining an OS than Vista is. There is a fantastic guide on creating a Vista/XP dual-boot that I know, and I've linked you below. This will tide you over until 2K can get off their fat arses and fix the game anyway.

Dual-boot guide: FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS TO THE LETTER!!!

Thanks. I'm feeling rather lazy at the moment though and I'm going to wait till later to mess around with that. It looks like it's going to be quite a job. I'm assuming that if I have a separate HDD that doesn't have the OS installed and is just storage, I can just make a partition on that and install XP without having to worry about putting the Vista disc in at the beginning?

quote Lord Sion

Thanks. I'm feeling rather lazy at the moment though and I'm going to wait till later to mess around with that. It looks like it's going to be quite a job. I'm assuming that if I have a separate HDD that doesn't have the OS installed and is just storage, I can just make a partition on that and install XP without having to worry about putting the Vista disc in at the beginning?

I took a short-cut and simply partitioned the harddrive then installed XP on the partition. However, because there was no bootloader I couldn't boot into either OS. Because of this what I had to do was boot off the Vista install disc and hit the "Repair your Computer" button. Then you select your Vista install and clcik next and select "Startup Repair". Once you finish download and install the application EasyBCD to set up the dual-boot. Launch the app and go to Add/Remove Entries. Under "Add an Entry" and under the Windows tab and select in the Version drop-down list "Windows NT/2k/XP/2k3". Change the Drive to E:\ and the name to "Windows XP", then click "Add Entry" and "Save".

Your done and you have a dual-boot system.

For more detailed instruction on this exact procedure see that guide under the section "Restoring Vista and dual booting".

It's easier than you think.

I don't really feel like installing an entire OS just to play a single game when everything else works perfectly 100%. Besides PartitionMagic is incompatible with Vista, so the only way to install XP would be to erase everything on the drive and start fresh to make new partitions and I have nothing to back up over 100GB worth of data onto.