I turned off sound in the installer and turned off sound in D-Fend.
It still crashes at the soundcard check.

Don't use D-Fend.
Game runs fine directly in dosbox.

Yes! Thanks!
There was another folder called BIOFORGE inside the extracted folder, so I dumped the contents of that to the main folder and it runs brilliantly, sound and all. Only glitch is some of the backgrounds are messed and only partially appear as animations pass over them.
Now, let's find the game manual...

HELP
 

when i load it up on Dosbox it says

A problem was detected:
Bioforge was unable to locate the CDROM drive or the game CD.

Now sold on GOG :)

The game is still sold on GOG. Can someone fix the link for this?

Bioforge [GoG]
 

Mods are working for a site problem - they are fix the link if problem is fixed.

finally finished it after so many years! great game!