Well, you could always try installing the standard Sound Blaster or Sound Blaster Pro drivers since the DOS stuff that works is already loaded before Windows loads.

I've tried selecting the Sound Baster options in Windows' driver list, and installing from the Windows disks as instructed. The problem is that I can try every IRQ/DMA channel combination and none of them will come up as valid. I'll see if I can find some Sound Blaster Pro drivers that work (it isn't a default option in the Win3.1 driver list that I see.)

EDIT: I attempted to use the driver listed here, and it seems to install successfully, until it gives me a "Divide By Zero or Overflow Error" that prevents Windows from starting at all. Does anybody know offhand why this would happen?

A quick update: I managed to get past the divide-by-zero error. As I should have guessed, it was a speed problem; as long as I use Throttle before starting Windows, the error won't come up, and so I'm able to install the SB Pro driver linked above successfully.

...the bad news is that there's still no sound. What's peculiar is that, as long as I'm still in DOS, and (this is key) as long as I've loaded AU30DOS.COM (the DOS driver for the PCI sound card I use) first, the TEST-SBP.EXE provided with the sound card works no problem with the DMA/IRQ/etc settings provided in SET BLASTER that I use for everything else. But when I run TEST-SBP.EXE from Windows, it halts while scanning around the available IRQ's, possibly suggesting a conflict. But I'm not sure what the conflict is with, because again, the IRQ setting in question works without a hitch in DOS. Is there something I need to uninstall or unload in Windows, or a particular switch I need to start it with? (As always let me know if I should provide more information.)

I would go into device manager and look at everything to see if any other device is using the I/O, IRQ, or DMA that is in the SET BLASTER statement.

You could also see if disabling "PnP OS" in the BIOS helps as it will force the BIOS to configure resources instead of letting Windows do it.. if it isn't disabled already.

Also set the PCI Configuration to manual and reserve the IRQ you want for the sound card... instead of PnP, set that IRQ to Legacy.

If the sound card is in a slot that shares the IRQ with something like the IDE controller, video, etc, try moving it to a different slot.

Hi there, a little bit of a thread necro.
but to answer your question, You cannot use the vortex 2 dos driver to use with windows 3.xx. the TSR will unload itself from memory before windows boots from dos. using the test-sbp program from within windows dos prompt behavior is normal if not in a native isa bus system.

you cannot use a TSR program that does sb functions for windows 3.xx period. because the sound blaster drivers for win3x expect a real sound blaster using native isa resources and is not possible with I/O port trapping and dma emulation. simliar to what ensoniq and later sb pci sound cards do to emulate an ISA Sound Blaster. Aureal gets away of doing this somehow in real mode though...

what you need is a sound card that has native driver support & chipset support. i believe the vortex 1 has native drivers for windows 3x. PCI Sound cards with the sb-link connector can use the windows 3.11 built-in sound blaster driver.

here is another thread dedicated to pci sound cards
and windows 3x

PCI Sound card for Windows 3.11 & Dos 6.22?