PC gaming is still a PIA

[Nostromo]

I recently upgraded my PC and bought Mass Effect on Steam. I didn't work straightaway. I had to fiddle a bit with it. Now its playable, but I have to start Steam has an admin, otherwise it doesn't work.

A couple of days ago I bought Bioshock on Steam. And it doesn't even start. After the game logo shows up, the game stops. An audio codec conflict seems to be the source of the problem.

I was having the crash immediately after the Bioshock logo. I used Procmon to determine that immediately prior to the crash, it was accessing audio code. From there, I narrowed it down to the FMOD sound system.

To fix -

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

If I try this, the game works, but I don't have any sound. Someone suggested the following.

Okay guys, let me guess... the thing we all have in common is...

GOMPLAYER!

Gomplayer installs a codec called msaud32_divx.acm, which is what is blowing it all up. Go to the registry, and navigate to:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Drivers32

Delete the value called msacm.divxa32.

But I don't have GOMplayer. But maybe another program installed the msaud32_divx.acm codec he talks about. But when I look in HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion, theres no Drivers32. Any idea where I could find it? I'm using Windows 7 Premium 64bit.