Don't recall this happening with mine. My XP is presently "Mostly-Dead", so I can't check now.

VDMSound doesn't "take control" of your sound card. It's 100% software emulation that goes through your sound card via DirectSound or waveOut. The DOSDRV is a TSR, so when your command window closes, DOSDRV should disengage.
That said, I'm running Windows 2000, so I can't help that much.
My suggestion check for driver updates.

jrecampbell wrote:

Has anyone else had the problem of general Windows system sounds being cut off or garbled AFTER exiting back to the desktop from a game using DOSDRV. It's as if VDM doesn't fully give control of the soundcard back to XP. Are there any .ini setting I can fiddle with? At the moment I have reboot after playing a game to get the soundcard working properly again. BTW, it's a Crystal chipset in a Toshiba laptop.

Thanks

Sounds like broken soundcard drivers to me. I'm amazed you only had this problem with VDMSound and not with other programs (like Winamp or MediaPlayer) as well.

VDMSound uses by default DirectSound. You can switch to WaveOut (from LaunchPad's "Advanced" properties, under SoundBlaster or, if not using LaunchPad, see the DirectSound/WaveOut instructions at the top of the VDMS.INI file). This may cause the sound driver to behave differently.

You may also try (instead of rebooting) to go to Device Manager and stop then restart the sound driver.

V.