"Echo" with Sound in VM

Another question, I know, but I don't log on here as much anymore so I thought it best to ask both at once. I installed a Windows 98 Virtual Machine on Vista, which once I finally got it running is not doing bad at all. I half prefer it thanks to all the Vista trouble I've been having. But there is one place that it isn't doing well - sound.

It seems that whenever I play a sound in Windows Media Player (the only player I have on it so far), it doesn't play smoothly. In fact, I noticed that after hitting the Stop button, the sound "echoed" the last part played for a second or two. It's as if each note is being played twice, almost as if once by each speaker. Not having used a VM before, I don't know if this is a normal problem, but I'm assuming it's not. So the question is, how to get my sound files to play normally?

I'm guessing resources may be a problem. I've allocated 1 GB of RAM to Win98, so that shouldn't be a problem. My processor is a 2.2 GHz Core 2 Duo and isn't being upgraded anytime soon. Sound is integrated. I enabled Intel Virtualizaton Technology in the BIOS, and while that seemed to help, it didn't fix the problem. I also installed the Virtual Machine Addons in Virtual PC 2007.

My OS is Vista Home Premium - as a non-Business solution it may be some of the problem.

So to those of you who have gotten this to work correctly, how is it done? It seems like there must be a way.

Oh, and there is a small point to this - WMP 11 doesn't play .rmi files, and WMP 98 does, so I can get more of my music playing if I get this to work!

 

For purely addressing the playback problem, give VLC a try (videolan.org)...I haven't found anything it can't play yet.

I don't have very much experience with VM setups, but one thing that comes to mind is that perhaps the microphone is not muted under the Windows 98 playback volume. That could create the effect you're describing. Beyond that, unfortunately, my ideas are tapped out.