I recently partitioned my harddrive. I used the backup program and backed up all of my files. I restored the files, yet my sound card no longer works. I've tried several things, and what it seems to boil down to, is that my computer can't find the physical sound card (an ESS ES1869f AudioDrive). I would remove the software from the device manager and restart. with WIN98 it should detect the hardware on the next start up. But it doesn't. I even removed the software, turned off the computer. removed the hardware, and restarted. After this put the hardware back in, and started the computer. Windows still did not detect the presence of new hardware. Am I missing files for the detection or what? Can someone help?

are you sure you got the right driver for your sound card? most likely if you sound card works before, then its drivers problem. make sure your driver is compatible to win98.

Hmmm! I don't think it's the driver, Ryan. The computer has to detect the hardware first before you install driver. Installing the most updated driver will not do any good if the hardware is non existent. You are using Pentium II, If you could give me your motherboard's name and BIOS(be it 440LX or BX) I could work closely with you. Remove and try another slot(You probably had done that already). Windows 98 is a PnP OS, Check your BIOS to make sure that it is enabled, if not, it will not autodetect. If you have an onboard soundcard, make sure that you disable it from BIOS setup and that your speaker is plugged in to the correct soundcard. Pentium II motherboards are fairly old compared to today's standard. Some of them requires driver to enable the motherboard itself and it's components. See if your motherboard is one of this kind.

First off, Thank you for your help. I'm not sure where to look for the name of the motherboard. Does VB-601 help? I can tell you that the bios is an 82443BX. Looking at my device manager there are a few things disabled under system devices. Two separate "Motherboard resources" have been disabled. looking at the properties i'm told: This device is disabled. (code 22) You can't enable this device because it has been disabled by a windows driver. I get the same message under properties for the "IO read data port for ISA Plug and Play enumerator" On the other hand I'm told that the PnP Bios under device manager is working properly. I can give you any information you need. Thank you again for helping me, and to anyone else that chips in their two cents.