mt777 wrote on 2021-02-04, 00:56:

Fresh OS, creative drivers installed, no conflicts in device manager . Diagnose didn't ask about testing onboard dram and finall […]
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Fresh OS, creative drivers installed, no conflicts in device manager . Diagnose didn't ask about testing onboard dram and finally AWE Synthesized music option is missing. About 1/10 reboots - diagnose will ask about testing dram and then AWE testing option is appearing.
PNP OS installed - disabled in bios.
I checked also with other Gold cards which tested earlier in another board.

Checked also without installing Creative drivers (only native drivers from 98). Empty Autoexec, the same issues.

Is your ISA bus running faster than 8MHz or so ?

If you are installing DOS drivers under Win9x, you need to use a special process:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiSM5pUGab4

Try that method if you haven't already and see if diagnose.exe behaves the same. If it still fails, it could be a hardware issue.