O.K., I can't figure out what's going on here. I'll try to make this as concise as possible: I'm running some games in pure DOS mode under Win98 on a computer equipped w/ an AW230 Crystal SoundFusion soundcard. However, in pure DOS mode, I get no sound w/ my games, only a message saying "audio initialization failed." I had initially assumed this meant I had no DOS-compatible driver for my soundcard, but when I boot to pure DOS, there's always this message which says "CrystalWare SoundFusion Initialization Utility." Is not this in fact said driver?? If not, just what exactly is it??? Thanks to all, Allan

It SORT of is a driver...for my ESS Audiodrive, I had a util that ran and set values like volume, joystick enabled, port, DMA, etc., but did not remain resident in memory. In DOS, you can usually make any SB-compatible sound card work okay by setting the BLASTER variable. SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T4, or else I5 instead of I7, will usually work fine. On my ESS, no programs would think I even had a sound card, even with the "driver" loaded, until I set the BLASTER variable. Anyway, check and make sure any settings with the init util are okay, like IO Port, DMA port, IRQ, etc. You might want to check that out in Windows. Hope I helped... -Chris

Thanks, Chris, I tried editing my autoexec.bat file w/ the settings you gave me, but it still doesn't work. I want to try your other suggestion, checking the settings w/ the initialization utility, but have no idea how. Could you give me some guidance on this?? Thanks, Allan

Gee, you're really big and bad over the Internet!

Roz, what is your problem? This is a tech support forum. You obviously need a life if you go around and purposely go out of your way to try and make people feel bad. Allan asked a question, not offensive in any way, so why did you respond like that? Anyway, Allan.... If the utility came with documentation, I would check that out, they should have instructions on how to change settings. Is this "driver" run in CONFIG.SYS or AUTOEXEC.BAT? If it's run in AUTOEXEC then try running it without any command-line options or else try /?. This should list all the options. The settings should be in Windows under the System area, somewhere.

"A mere female"? Ummm...ok?? Why not share your search results then and finish this thread?

Well if she *did* have the answer, you just doomed the chances of getting it from her. I'd suggest getting known valid MS-DOS drivers and following the instructions. You are probably missing the loading of a *.sys file in your config.sys file or something simple.