Linux/Windows Platform code discrepancy question

This involves the OpenAL libray and EAX extensions. I had set things up to where the DLL on the user's machine would be called first, and now I am getting some errors when a card does not support EAX.


In the Windows code,

if(bindOpenALFunctions())
{
	// if EAX is available bind it's function pointers
	//if (alIsExtensionPresent((ALubyte*)"EAX" ))
	      bindEAXFunctions();
	return(true);
}

You can see that the call to "BindEAXFunctions" is always called, due to the conditional being commented out.

In the Linux code:

if(bindOpenALFunctions())
      {
         // if EAX is available bind it's function pointers
         if (alIsExtensionPresent((ALubyte*)"EAX" ))
            bindEAXFunctions();
         return(true);
      }

The conditional is not commented out.

When I have a DLL that does not support EAX, and I get the following error messages when it calls BindEAXFunctions:

Missing OpenAL Extension function 'EAXSet'
Missing OpenAL Extension function 'EAXGet'


This error does not _appear_ to prove fatal to the sound or the program, but there is a discrepancy in that the condition was removed from one platform and not another. Can this become fatal later in a program's life? And why has the conditional been commented out in the windows version but not the Linux version?

--Mark