[Beeblebrox]

Oki. Latest and hopefully last post in this thread on my behalf. Did my annual windows reinstall yesterday. Installed lastest realtek drivers for the ac97 (which, it said would be MS-signed, which of course was not the case, at least according to my win XP). Now, for the first time I can actually enjoy mayhem with sound for more than 2-3 rounds. The game has yet to crash, in fact! However, there appears to be something at least mildely wrong still, as sound volume would suddenly drop, only to reappear again a few moves later. Dunno what that's all about, but I really don't care at this point. All in all I'm quite happy with this level of enjoyment. Thanks all for helping out.