Disclaimer: There is a related question, describing missing in-game sound. This is about the game crashing on start up and starting only with the -nosound
flag (obviously deactivating sound output).
When Bioshock is started on Windows 7 (Steam version), it shows a splash screen with the Bioshock logo and then crashes. If one passes the -nosound
flag to the game it manages to start and play music in the menu, but (obviously) does not play any sounds in-game.
Various internet-sites propose different tweaks but none work.