I have a number of windows 98 boxes and I usually use a virtual cd for gaming. It works great for windows games, but if I run dos games like screamer2 I have to run them in a dos box from within windows98 to use the virtual cd. With a single sound card the game will detect the card and allows me to use it but will not play music or if no sound card is selected, the game will play the cd music. I am able to get around this by installing two soundcards, one for windows98 and a isa card for sound effects, midi, etc. So far this has worked out well, but now I am trying to put together a more recent system without an isa slot and wonder if there is any other way around the 2 card issue. I assume it is because a single card will have a conflict as windows is using it for the virtual cd at the same time dos is trying to access it. For whatever reason and I cannot seem to recreate it, I was able to at one time run a creative labs audigy2 without dos drivers installed and it just worked, but as I said I cannot recreate it once I swapped the Audigy for an Aureal and then back again.