I58 wrote on 2026-01-23, 14:50:

Setup before everything went wrong: I was able to set up Sound Blaster as the sound card in DOS games using Realtek AC’97. I did […]
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Setup before everything went wrong:
I was able to set up Sound Blaster as the sound card in DOS games using Realtek AC’97. I didn’t have a physical sound card installed, but I could hear music and sound in DOS games.

What I did today:
Today I decided to install a real sound card. I installed all required drivers, including the DOS driver, and it worked. In DOS games launched from Windows, the sound card was detected and I could, for example, play Star Wars: Dark Forces with music.

However, when I played Age of Empires 1, the music was gone. Also, on every boot my PC now says “EMM386 is not installed”, and booting takes longer because of this. So I uninstalled everything to try to revert the system to how it was before.

Current problem:
Now the “EMM386 not installed” boot message is still there, and I can’t play any sound in DOS games. Carmageddon doesn’t even start anymore — I only get a black screen.

Is there a way to fix all of this? It feels like my Windows 98 PC is ruined.

System (Windows 98 SE – legacy setup):
• Intel Pentium 4 @ 2.66 GHz
• AOpen MX4GER
• 1 GB RAM
• Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti 4200
• Sony SDM-S51 15” LCD monitor

Everything works now!
On config.sys i deselect emm386.exe and on autoexec.bat i deselect “set blaster=a220 i5 d1 h5 p330”
Now games start and have sound

I58 wrote on 2026-01-23, 16:01:

Everything works now!
On config.sys i deselect emm386.exe and on autoexec.bat i deselect “set blaster=a220 i5 d1 h5 p330”
Now games start and have sound

Thanks for the update 😀 Your solution is what I was going to suggest since that appears to be a post-ISA type system with a P4 and a soundcard with no DOS handling of its own. Instead the computer is using AC97 audio and the Windows 98 virtual soundblaster / MPU401 for sound in DOS games - which works quite well for a lot of stuff.

If you put the SET BLASTER command into the autoexec.bat then the virtual soundblaster functionality is quietly disabled, probably to stop it tripping up another soundcard which it guesses there is one if the "SET BLASTER=..." is present.

I've also found that virtual soundblaster can't work if there's another device on the computer using DMA 1, it'll just fail or give no sound output. Moving the Infra Red device on my Tecra P4 laptop to DMA3 instead allows the virtual soundblaster to work properly.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2026-01-24, 21:44:

Thanks for the update :) Your solution is what I was going to suggest since that appears to be a post-ISA type system with a P4 […]
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I58 wrote on 2026-01-23, 16:01:

Everything works now!
On config.sys i deselect emm386.exe and on autoexec.bat i deselect “set blaster=a220 i5 d1 h5 p330”
Now games start and have sound

Thanks for the update 😀 Your solution is what I was going to suggest since that appears to be a post-ISA type system with a P4 and a soundcard with no DOS handling of its own. Instead the computer is using AC97 audio and the Windows 98 virtual soundblaster / MPU401 for sound in DOS games - which works quite well for a lot of stuff.

If you put the SET BLASTER command into the autoexec.bat then the virtual soundblaster functionality is quietly disabled, probably to stop it tripping up another soundcard which it guesses there is one if the "SET BLASTER=..." is present.

I've also found that virtual soundblaster can't work if there's another device on the computer using DMA 1, it'll just fail or give no sound output. Moving the Infra Red device on my Tecra P4 laptop to DMA3 instead allows the virtual soundblaster to work properly.

Thank you for extra information. Maybe all this will be useful in future for somebody else