I'm sorry that I can't help you 🙁, but I have the same issue on my Win98SE PC at my mother's house. Now, she's homeless, though. 🙁

Need PC specs, especially sound card device. The solution is going to be specific to the hardware you are using.

hi thanks for your message the computer I'm using is a Compaq Presario 2294 desktop with windows 98
I'm not Shure what the actual sound card is i will try to find out

hi in relation to you asking for my pc specs I looked them up and tried to find out as much information as possible here they are
Display 1770G on SIS 5597/5598
computer Authentic AMD
AMD-K6 3D processor
60.0 MB RAM
file system 32.bit
pc cards(PCMCIA) no pc card sockets are installed
PCI serial controllers Hardware version 001 , the drivers for this device are not installed code 28
sound, video, and game controller's
ES1869 control interface (WDM)
ES1869 plug and play Audio drive (WDM)
hope this helps

ES1869 and DOS

Get the DOS drivers (185xdos.zip)
https://www.philscomputerlab.com/ess-audiodrive-es1868.html

Then run

ESSCFG /A:220 /I:7 /D:1 /B:330 /J:E

To initialize the card in DOS

hi ive downloaded the driver do i run the driver in dos or windows and you mentioned run ESSCFG /A:220 /I:7 /D:1 /B:330 /J:E
do i do this in dos or windows and if so in dos where d0o i type in ESSCFG /A:220 /I:7 /D:1 /B:330 /J:E

jude1977 wrote on 2026-01-03, 05:01:

hi ive downloaded the driver do i run the driver in dos or windows and you mentioned run ESSCFG /A:220 /I:7 /D:1 /B:330 /J:E
do i do this in dos or windows and if so in dos where d0o i type in ESSCFG /A:220 /I:7 /D:1 /B:330 /J:E

You run it in DOS to enable sound

It can also be added to autoexec.bat so it runs automatically every time the computer starts

hi I've downloaded the driver 185xdos.zip extracted it and installed it in dos and chose the options A:220 I7 D1 B:330 J:E
the line is also automatically added in my Autoexec.bat file but when I run the game in dos mode still no sound

- Have you set your BLASTER variable?
- Have you configured each game to use the correct sound blaster settings?
- Have you done any searching at all on how sound works in DOS?

hi yes I've tried different sound card settings for my game
what do you mean by set your blaster variable I used to use dos a lot back in the day but have forgotten a lot of it

The BLASTER variable tells some games where to find the sound card, usually that means having a line in the autoexec.bat which matches the settings like this

SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 P330 T4

With regards to sound not working in "MS-DOS Mode", if you choose shutdown -> Restart into MS-DOS mode, autoexec.bat doesn't run again. Once windows loads and the driver takes over the sound card it's no longer in DOS compatibility mode and needs to be initialized again.

You have to either manually run ESSCFG again after dropping back to MS-DOS mode, or if you want it to run automatically put it into C:\WINDOWS\DOSSTART.BAT

Also run ESSVOL and set the audio channels you need to the right volume