Alternative PC Speaker driver does not work

[WindowsNinetyTen]

When I use the BeepXP.sys driver (64-bit version) by following the instructions, programs get no sound at all. Am I doing anything incorrectly? I'm using Windows 11.

[leecher1337]

Depends on whether your machine has a real PC Speaker connected or not. If there is no speaker attached to the board, it won't work. There is a new release of beepxp that also contains a directsound driver that can emulate a PC speaker on http://dose.0wnz.at/waldbauer.com/ for systems without a physical PC speaker.

[WindowsNinetyTen]

My machine has a real PC speaker; it beeps upon bootup (it's an Acer).

[leecher1337]

As you said you are using Windows 11, it may be possible that beepxp64 won't load properly due to higher driver signing requirements that cannot be met by the driver, thus the machien is unable to load the driver properly. In that case, you have to put Windows into test signing mode and disable secure boot in order to load the driver.
Alternatively - as said - you can use the dsbeep replacement, which doesn't require a kernelmode driver and is emualting via soundcard, but also doesn't react as quickly as the physical PC speaker and isn't that accurate

[WindowsNinetyTen]

As for loading test signing mode and disabling secure boot, must these be permanent, or can I switch back on after perfoming these two steps and installing the driver thereby?

I tried both Direct and HAL variants, and the INF does copy the driver to System32, and I can even use sc config to set beepxp to auto, but nothing happens. It is present in the registry editor, though.

When I use Ctrl + G to test speaker beeps, I get only the Windows notification sound coming from the regualr sound output, not from my machine's motherboard speaker.

[WindowsNinetyTen]

Though...my PC's speaker is one of those piezo speakers. Does that explain anything?

[leecher1337]

Of course test signing mode has to be permanent, as soon as you disable it the driver won't load anymore.

I guess to use the squarewave beeper, which is part of the 32bit package, its vdd driver needs to be adapted to find a signature that matches your ntvdmx64 build and be able to hook the function call in there as it is targeting the 32bit Microsoft NTVDM.EXE and not NTVDMx64.
As sourcecode is included, this should be possible to do, take a look at spkrfix.c which contains FLIRT-Signatures to find the LazyBeep calls inside NTVDM.EXE