You say, you have that
ESS Solo-1 Sound Blaster Compatible (WDM)/ ESS Solo-1 PCI Audio Drive (WDM) soundcard. To be honest, I never heard anything of that one (always had only Soundblaster cards, too
), but if it is Soundblaster-compatible, those compatible soundcards mostly only support plain Soundblaster or Soundblaster 2.0-setting, not Soundblaster Pro or Soundblaster 16. Also the Soundblaster-sound does not work with system-drivers that Windows 98 uses to contact the soundcard. It's because the settings for them in Dos are different as in Windows and they don't support Ms-Dos sound in any way, so you'll most surely need these drivers for sound in Dos, or, if they don't work, try to search on
www.google.de for the drivers for this card specifically.