From my recollection, you install from the setup file on the CD, which installs the WDM driver and apps. Then, once the driver and apps have been installed properly, there is a utility in the start menu that allows you to switch to the VxD drivers.

Do make sure it's an actual retail card, not Dell/HP OEM, which are kinda useless for win9x and only good for win2k and up. They all say SB0350 on the front, but if you check the serial number on the sticker on the back, you might see sb0358 or sb0359 or something contained within the number, tell-tale that its not the actual retail sb0350

Starting with the Live!, Creative made quite a mess when it comes to card variations. You can not mix the installation CDs, even if it's for a card with basically the same name. Your CD is most likely not for the specific variant of your Audigy 2 ZS card.

God Of Gaming wrote:

Do make sure it's an actual retail card, not Dell/HP OEM, which are kinda useless for win9x and only good for win2k and up. They all say SB0350 on the front, but if you check the serial number on the sticker on the back, you might see sb0358 or sb0359 or something contained within the number, tell-tale that its not the actual retail sb0350

I just double checked and my card says SB0350 both on the front and the rear sticker with serial No: M1SB0359447004360K

since I see "SB0359" in the actual serial number I'm guessing this is actually not a retail card then?

*edit* did some googling and looks like it's infact a HP OEM card. Maybe I can find some drivers for it

If you can find the HP driver disc, and it contains win9x drivers, you might be able to, but you can't use the retail creative disc, it wont detect it. There was a thread around here somewhere with instructions of how to extract the driver files and edit them so they will detect oem cards, but when I had one of those, it didnt work for me. Force-installing driver from device manager will get the card to output sound, but without EAX and other advanced features being enabled. So I sold mine and am now looking for a cheap retail model

After some web searching, I found the instructions to allow the OEM Audigy 2 ZS to work with the Creative driver CD.

See the instructions from user Magnux here AnandTech Forums - Audigy 2: ZS retail vs. OEM

...If this is something you want to do, follow the manual method (not automatic method) at this site. But, instead of inserting the Audigy 1, SBLive! 5.1 and SBLive! lines it mentions, simply add 02200005 to the list of ID's that are currently in the CTComp.DAT file...

The archived site with full instructions How To Install The Audigy 2 Unified Drivers & Software On An Audigy/Live!

yes, this is exactly what I tried when I had one of these, and it still didn't work for me. but it seems to work for some, so idk

Stretch wrote:

After some web searching, I found the instructions to allow the OEM Audigy 2 ZS to work with the Creative driver CD. […]
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After some web searching, I found the instructions to allow the OEM Audigy 2 ZS to work with the Creative driver CD.

See the instructions from user Magnux here AnandTech Forums - Audigy 2: ZS retail vs. OEM

...If this is something you want to do, follow the manual method (not automatic method) at this site. But, instead of inserting the Audigy 1, SBLive! 5.1 and SBLive! lines it mentions, simply add 02200005 to the list of ID's that are currently in the CTComp.DAT file...

The archived site with full instructions How To Install The Audigy 2 Unified Drivers & Software On An Audigy/Live!

thanks for this, I'm attempting it now. First with the automatic method, but if that doesn't work I'll give the manual method a try too.