AndreaColombo86 wrote on 2026-05-22, 10:56:

Ideally I’ll have only one hard drive on my retro PC, but that can change if necessary.

While I can't be of much help, as I lack the experience with this kind of setup, it might be worth taking a look at this thread by @Shponglefan: Pentium 4 Multi-OS Build Log (DOS/3.11/95/NT4/98/2k/Me/XP)

Other people here have similar systems too.

AndreaColombo86 wrote on 2026-05-22, 10:56:

Hello, everyone! […]
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Hello, everyone!

It has been brought to my attention that it would be potentially possible to install two sound cards on my retro PC, then have two different images of WinXP at the ready with one card disabled and the other one enabled, which I could switch between at the click of a button.

This would be amazing for my use case, as I could have both a Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 to get EAX occlusion in BG2 and a Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty for games with more advanced EAX support.

Could someone provide a step by step guide on how to handle this? Or point me to an existing guide? I’ve never done anything like this.

Ideally I’ll have only one hard drive on my retro PC, but that can change if necessary.

EDIT: Would I be better served by just having two different partitions, both with WinXP?

In theory you can have as many sound cards simultaneously active under Win XP as you want. You do not even have to use hardware profiles or different 'images'. Currently I have 3 active sound cards under Win XP. But only 1 of them is from Creative (Audigy 2 ZS). The problematic case is multiple different sound cards from the same vendor with potentially overlapping driver components. But the Live and the X-Fi are rather far away from each other so you can try to install them both.
Under WinXp you can select which sound card should be the default WaveOut/Directsound device so games and music apps can use the selected one by default. In some of the games/apps you can even select explicitly which sound card should be used.
First you should try the older (non-Audigy compatible LiveWare 3) SBLive drivers since they have less chance to produce driver component name conflicts with the newer X-FI drivers.

Thank you for your feedback.

So you think the newer (2004) drivers for the SB Live! could be problematic?

I know for sure those drivers provide EAX occlusion in Baldur’s Gate under WinXP. Not sure about the others.

Where could I download the driver package you mentioned?

AndreaColombo86 wrote on 2026-05-22, 15:37:

Thank you for your feedback. […]
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Thank you for your feedback.

So you think the newer (2004) drivers for the SB Live! could be problematic?

I know for sure those drivers provide EAX occlusion in Baldur’s Gate under WinXP. Not sure about the others.

Where could I download the driver package you mentioned?

Unfortunately for SB Live! cards there are no 'universal' best drivers since there are many kinds of SB Live! cards and some of them only work with very specific drivers (e.g. OEM cards intended for Dell systems).
You have to check the exact model number (e.g. SB0100 etc.) in order to get exact driver recommendations.
BTW, I do not know if your drivers from 2004 is problematic or not. You can give them a chance.

I would have to pick it out of the build it is currently sitting in, but if I recall correctly the one I have is the standard retail model (SB0100).

AndreaColombo86 wrote on 2026-05-22, 16:54:

I would have to pick it out of the build it is currently sitting in, but if I recall correctly the one I have is the standard retail model (SB0100).

Then this driver should work with it:
https://archive.org/details/sbinstall_202004

Thank you.

While we’re at it, can I run two different sound cards in the same way under Win98 SE?

I was thinking an MX300 and an Audigy 2 ZS.

AndreaColombo86 wrote on 2026-05-23, 15:20:

Thank you.

While we’re at it, can I run two different sound cards in the same way under Win98 SE?

I was thinking an MX300 and an Audigy 2 ZS.

Yes, of course. I would install the Audigy 2 ZS first since AFAIK it installs a crippled A3d library that can overwrite the one from the Aureal driver.

AndreaColombo86 wrote on 2026-05-23, 15:20:

While we’re at it, can I run two different sound cards in the same way under Win98 SE?

I was thinking an MX300 and an Audigy 2 ZS.

Aside from the DLL conflict that @Falcosoft already mentioned, there are potential issues with DirectX.

Some reports on this forum indicate that Aureal Vortex 2 cards can have problems if you use DirectX 8 or higher. Basically, they work best with DX 7.0a. On the other hand, Audigy 2 ZS needs DirectX 9.0a, or at least that's what Creative shipped on the official installation CD for that card.

According to AI (not sure how reliable that is), Audigy 2 ZS works with DX7. On that machine, I would use it exclusively for Baldur’s Gate and Max Payne, so I wouldn’t need anything beyond EAX 2.0 anyway. The rest would be A3D games.

I apologize here as well for citing AI. It was not my intention to contradict you, Joseph, I just wanted to add to the conversation. I’m sorry I did it this way.

It looks to me like trying to run the Audigy and the Vortex 2 card simultaneously could be more trouble than it is worth. If I end up pursuing a Win98 build, I might be better off focusing on A3D and just play EAX games on my WinXP build.

No worries. I've been asked that question regarding DX9 and Audigy 2 ZS drivers before, since I wrote a guide for installing those drivers. I really can't say anything other than "Creative shipped that version on the official installation disc, and uses it during the normal installation procedure". Whether the drivers themselves actually require any DX9 functionality or not is something that only one of the programmers who coded them back in the day could confirm.

As for using the Vortex 2 and Audigy in the same system, those kind of issues are exactly why people like @Shponglefan, myself and some others use multiple installations of Win9x. It's just less of a hassle that way, as you can set up each instance of the OS according to the needs of the hardware that you want to use. As mentioned before, his multi-boot method is superior to my approach, and it might work well on other systems too.

I will look into it into more detail if I decide to pursue the Win98 build. First time I read the thread it went a bit over my head, as I’m not very tech savvy when it comes to these things. I’m thankful that I have a friend who’s a computer technician for a living; he always helps me with my builds. I will certainly be discussing this option with him.

The thing I need to ask myself is whether it is worth it for just two games that I would use the Audigy for, as both games could run just as well on my WinXP machine.

I thank you and Falcosoft for the information and pointers. I’ll revisit this for sure when I get to it.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-05-25, 12:31:

I really can't say anything other than "Creative shipped that version on the official installation disc, and uses it during the normal installation procedure". Whether the drivers themselves actually require any DX9 functionality or not is something that only one of the programmers who coded them back in the day could confirm.

For what it's worth I've installed and used the regular non-ZS Audigy 2 without any issues with DirectX 8.1 installed. Not the exact same card but it too had DX9 redistributable on the creative driver cd.

But I can't either say what DirectX is actually needed and for what, so no idea would ZS work with DX7.