Remember last year when I did this? I'm still glad I did it.
The speakers I was using with my computer were pretty old. I mean before Amazon old. You know, old. I dug through my boxes of "retired" equipment and found speakers I got in 2013. I checked on Amazon, they still sell them for ten dollars less than I paid for them. I shoulda waited...nah, I used them as speakers for one of our old flat screen televisions when the sound went out. (Honestly, I'm old school, I just don't see how a flat screen television can have decent sound. Our latest one seems to, but I ended up getting a sound bar and we also use headphones when the A/C or furnace are in use because we can hear the car crashes and the explosions just fine, but for the speaking parts? Volume up! Then volume down! Repeat as needed.)
Anyway, I got these speakers set up with the computer. The sound wasn't ideal. Muffled. Tinny. Sounded like cheap speakers (I wonder why?). I tried installing an old equalizer program I'd gotten, DFX. I got it like a hundred or so years ago and since my license was for an old version, it wouldn't install. I tried installing the latest version, but kept getting the same error message that there was no settings file.
Well, this past month I really wanted to fix the sound. And I went back to the website where I'd originally gotten the DFX program. Hey, look! The most recent version is now free! Oh, yeah, free is good. I downloaded it and had the same problem, same error message. I installed it on the laptop with zero problem, but the PC just kept puking out that error message.
I posted on their forum (where it said they check the forums on a weekly basis) and two weeks later, still no response. I posted my disappointment at the lack of help and went off to see if I could find a reason for this message. And I did. It seems this is the message you get when your computer believes that you are not authorized to view this file and you do not have permission to open it. Okay, I've had this problem in the past with other software, but it isn't something I've had to deal with on a regular basis, so I had to look up instructions. And I found them.
It took me a couple of tries to get the right owner from the list, but the software opened right up and now my old cheap speakers sound just fine.
The software can be found at FXSound.com. It really is a great equalizer program.