Booting with a W3.1 pc

[wdc202]

After several months of experimenting I am still looking for help on this perplexing (?) problem with an old IBM pc with a W3.1 OS. I’d surly appreciate any suggestions.

Problem: My pc takes 30 minutes to boot to my windows desktop

Symptoms: The pc apparently stalls on boot -- at the “Microsoft Windows Version 3.1” screen ((the one with the flying Windows icons). But, in fact, it isn’t stalled; at the end of 30 minutes, it comes to life, with an error message to the effect that I have a hardware or driver problem with my audio (SoundBlaster 16) system. If I “ignore” the error message, I am taken to my Windows desktop and I can then use all the programs on the pc.

Suspected cause: A bad AEB or Config.sys

Actions taken without success:
 Reloaded original software from original CD.
 REMd out all lines in the AEB and config.sys that seem to involve SB16
 Tried to load new drivers for SB16

Other info that may be relevant:
 My speakers are not connected to the pc
 I have a scanner connected to the pc through a SCSI card but I have not reloaded the scanner software (paperport)
 I would be happy to do without the audio hardware and software

Can someone suggest something else I should try? Thanks … wdc

[jombo]

ok in the old 3.11 days everything was set in win.ini and system.ini in the win dir.
if you look around in the 2 files with notepad or whatever was in win 3.11 lol. some text editor there we go. maybe ya can stop the complaining on startup.

what it sounds like to me is the sound card didnt config its i/o and irq right when it installed. also in the old dos days they used the autoexec.bat and config.sys to set these for sound cards.

now sometimes if there was a dir created by the sound card installer look in it and they stashed the dos install proggie in there or left ya a text file to explain setting the irq and dma in the startup files. or look on the cd or the floppy for the sb for a dos installer
prolly what ya have is a conflict in irq or dma.

prolly im no help here but ya had been waitin a while on a response i thought id attempt to assist.

its all in the system.ini/win.ini and the 2 dos startup files. but newer sb cards the installer had to set the stuff in the card itself also. so if its newer you may be in a pickle with win3.11