Vista is fairly restrictive about programs accessing the root so unless you're running dosbox with full administrative rights or you've changed security settings so that root isn't protected you shouldn't try doing stuff with root.

Some/many? monitors tie it not just to the res but also the refresh rate. Also I'm not particularly sure if I get you. Are you saying Windows is 1024x768 and your using other programs that run at 1024x768 but each and every one seems to have their own monitor settings or what?

I haven't tried a game but I tried megamid, a DOS midi player. I haven't tried PCM audio in any way. I didn't however run in compatibility mode.

I can confirm that with Vista x64 and my X-Fi, I can select the MIDI output device with the config option and it works. Unfortunately Creative don't yet appear to have any way to load soundfonts in Vista 🙁

IIRC, the earlier SoundBlasters usually defaulted to IRQ 5, later models defaulted to 7 (I think this started with one of the SoundBlaster Pro models). This is actually the inverse of what happened. Originally, the SBs used IRQ 7 but then switched over to IRQ 5 to avoid a possible conflict. Can't …