Hi On one of my older computers I am having trouble with sound - there is none. I use the computer almost exclusively to play older dos games (doom, descent, duke3d etc). I am running Windows 95b (for some reason the video card does not work properly in Dos 6.22). I have tried two different sound cards in the machine, the ESS 1868 Audiodrive that came with it, and an older Sound Blaster 16 that I had which I know works. With both cards, I get the drivers installed, windows, and the Dos games recognise and configure the sound cards. But still I get no sound!!!!! Eg. If I open a WAV file in Media Player you can see the file playing on the display. When I run the Descent or Duke3d Setup programs, Autodetecting the sound card works, and when I go to "Test Sound Card", it seems to work - it displays "Testing Left Channel" "Testing Right Channel" etc. as if it is working. I just can't hear anything. I have also tried two different sets of speakers, to no avail. The volume on the speakers and in windows is set to maximum. I don't know what is wrong. Please help!!

Check the volume controls to make sure they haven't been turned down or muted.

Are you sure that the speakers are OK. Try some headphones.

Both sets of speakers work perfectly - I use one set of them every day on my main computer. All volume controls are at maximum. Any other ideas? I'm going insane trying to figure this one out.

Only a suggestion, I had it a couple of time on friends computers that that had no sound on XP. There is a mute button in the multimedia settings that was activaeted. Maybe it's something similiar! Are there any problem shown with the device manager with the soundcard ??? Oh, nearly forgot. you use it for dos games. Are the dos drivers installed correctly and start in properly in dos mode ??? Try a bootdisk and start the dos drivers on it to check (as far as I remember Win95 was a bit tricky to install between normal and dos mode!) !!!

If the speakers are not amplified, you need a speaker output on the sound cards (not Line Out)

I had legacy problems with the ESS1868/1869 drivers too. The legacy DOS drivers are supposed to use sound blaster settings but don't always work. I gave the 95b machine away with this sound card so I can't check which drivers I ended up with. If memory serves, I dug around driverguide.com for different drivers until one worked. Does the driver disk have a DOS install program or option to install DOS drivers?