Thanks for your current info so far - useful to know I'm not the only one with problems.

$US 20 translates into a much greater amount in Aus dolars maties! and I've only got three slots to play with... and I wouldnt waste my money on a crappy cheap sound card - I bought a cheap scanner...

The PC imploded the other night just after my past post - had tried to load the TWAIN drivers for my cheap scanner - "can't write to drive C (when reading a file)" BSOD - SCANDISK ---> "the two copies of your FAT are mismatched".... etc... BOOM! Format partition, Reload Win98... :-)

the file "reflash".reg" not installing after doing the sound stuff may be no small part of the sound problem...

It looks like I will be upgrading to XP home anyway at the moment... if the sound problem is as I suspect faulty s/w drivers, that will (hopefully) make it go away...

I'm not a PC newbie... been hacking away since 1975 - Teltsra gave away my Sysadmin job to India... done theatre lighting and sound, amatuer radio, etc..

"A fool knows evrything, a wise man leaves some room for new ideas"

Robin