Hey, I'm building a machine which dual boots 3.1/95 via acronis OS slecotr. All is good. I go into DOS 5, install drivers (found on Creative site, got latest update too) and reboot. DOS 5 loads fine, however, when I type win, all appears fine, I see the loading screen, icons start to appear (I use Calmira II 3.3) and then it just goes black. Then it reboots. Anybody any ideas? I tried commenting out all references to the ancient version of Norton Antivirus, just in case, but that did nothing except change the reboot to a total lock up, no mouse or keyboard. I'd like to find a way to keep the soundcard alive if possible. Should I post my config.sys, etc? Any help appreciated, thanks :-)

Config.sys doesn't have a whole lot to do with windows beyond setting up the DOS memory management. The Soundblaster environment variables (Set Blaster= ) are defined in autoexec.bat - I believe Win31 does use those. What makes you think that it's the soundcard drivers? Are you talking about win31 drivers or DOS drivers? We have nothing against ideas. We're against people spreading them. - General Augusto Pinochet of Chile

The Awe 64 should run fine with DOS and Win 3.1. Maybe you should try dumping the Calmira shell first and see if you can get it working with straight Win 3.1. There is also a Creative Labs diagnostic EXE file that you may have already downloaded. If I remember correctly, you will at least be able to make sure everything is OK in DOS and maybe it checks some Windows configurations also, I don't remember exactly. I loaded Calmira twice on my Windows 3.1x machines. Both times, I couldn't get the sound card to work so changed things back so windows 3.1 started normally and I started Calmira from its Program Icon within Windows 3.1. Maybe others have had better luck with Calmira and Sound but I haven't. I also noticed that I if I installed things from the Calmira interface rather than from Program manager, things got messed up. There are probably backups to the Autoexec.bat, Config.sys, System.ini, and Win.ini that you could use to get back to the point before you installed the AWE 64 software. So here are my suggestions Revert to PRE Calmira EXE & INI files (a happier and less troubled time) Install Creative Labs software Run Calmira from icon End all wars and brush your teeth regularly.

As the AWE64 card is Plug'n'Pray did you also install the DOS P'n'P drivers??????

Hey, Thank you for the quick replies! :-) To reply to jboy, the reason I believe it to be the soundcard drivers is because everything was fine until after I rebooted the machine from installing the drivers,. Since then, no go. I just installed the package off creatives site. Said it set up both DOS and Windows (via win.ini & system.ini). I tried the diagnose progeam, it worked fine, and the test songs played fine (this in DOS), so the card is setup right. I also tried commenting out the shell line for calmira and re-instating progman, still no luck. Could it be anythiing to do with the FAT32 disk sitting in the machine as primary master? While I was thinking just now, I think I put that in once i'd installed the drivers too.....i'll look into that. Oh, and 4004, thank you for the suggestion. Yes, I did. The driver install wouldn't let me continue until I had :-) Thankyou for the help!

DOS5 shouldn't even be aware of any FAT32 drives - if you're booting to DOS, then the FAT16 disk is seen as 'C:'. Not too sure what it could be if the card tests ok in DOS. Does the test program play midi or wave samples? Those are governed by different settings. We have nothing against ideas. We're against people spreading them. - General Augusto Pinochet of Chile

Hey there, The DOS test program plays all the choices it gives (one is midi, i'm guessing therefore the other are wav, they don't sound like midi's) fine. However, when windows boots, I get no opening sound (if it does one) so it does appear to be sound locking it. Unfortunately, I don't know how to unistall the drivers to make sure..... Thanks for the help everyone has offered