http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10116
Summary: A warning should be shown if a sound subsystem cannot be open Product: Wine Version: CVS/GIT Platform: PC OS/Version: Linux Status: UNCONFIRMED Severity: major Priority: P2 Component: wine-multimedia AssignedTo: wine-bugs@winehq.org ReportedBy: t.artem@mailcity.com
There are some sound/music applications which do not have any exception handling for a situation when a sound cannot be routed/output.
So, if your sound system is busy (some cheap AC97/HDA ALSA audio and no hardware mixing) and you try to run such an application it can die with some strange error when trying to play any sound, e.g.:
Backtrace: =>1 0x00000000 (0x0033ff08) 2 0x7ee4f9ab in kernel32 (+0x4f9ab) (0x0033ffe8) 3 0xb7e94707 wine_switch_to_stack+0x17() in libwine.so.1 (0x00000000) 0x00000000: addb %al,0x0(%eax)
To give a user a hint, it will be sufficient to MsgBox("Sound system is busy. Expect an application failure.");