My computer does not see its sound card. 
 
I have a Dell Dimension XPS Pro 200n (200 MHz Pentium Pro), circa
1997. Recently I reformatted the disk and reinstalled Windows NT 4.0.
After the fresh install, it didn't recognize its sound card -- it
claims that there is no sound card available. In fact, there is a
Soundblaster AWE32 card installed, which was working fine before the
OS reinstall.
 
I searched around on the web and found Soundblaster drivers in a file
named awent40.exe, containing the NT drivers for Soundblaster AWE32. I
unpacked the files, opened up the Multimedia Control Panel, clicked
Devices, clicked Add, located the directory with the unpacked drivers,
and then Windows popped up a dialog box labelled "Driver Exists": The
required sbawe32.drv driver is already on the system. Do you want to
use the current driver or install a new driver? I tried both clicking
New and Current; neither had any effect immediately or after
reboot--the "Audio Devices" icon under "Multimedia Drivers" in the
Multimedia control panel still is empty.
 
What should I do to make my computer see the sound card? 

Hi,
try this - (if you have the correct drivers - look at
http://www.americas.creative.com/support/welcome.asp?RD=download).
1.MULTIMEDIA/Audio click "Symbol in Tasklist" (is a soundcard
selected?,can you here something-music to test if it works?) -
2.DEVICES, there you can check every process which is runnig(started)
or deactiveted.

Try going to Control Panels | Add/Remove Hardware, And step throught
the wizard.
As with most things MS PnP doesnt always work right and you have to
use thier manual install wizard.
You could also try and put SP6a if you havn't done so already and see
if that helps.

Hi bay-ga,

Ah, the joys of re-installing drivers. It looks like you are on the
right path,
but there are two important details that are only apparent on close
reading
of the entire readme file.

Go to the directory you extracted "awent40.exe" to, and open
readme.txt.
There are five sections; you will want to follow sections I, IV, and
V:
 >   I.  Removing Previously Installed Creative Drivers
 > IV.  Installing Creative Legacy Audio Cards on Windows NT 4.0
 >  V.  Installing AWE Control Panel

Section I is not optional. Windows NT will have included the 1995
version of the Soundblaster
driver as it installed; you need to remove it before installing the
current driver.

Section IV is specifically for installing the drivers for SB16, SB32,
and AWE32 cards.
As described, you need go through the "Add Device" process *twice* to
fully install the
AWE32 drivers -- don't restart your computer as prompted after
installing the first device.

Hope that helps you.

BTW, if your sound card was an AWE64, you would need to follow the
instructions in section II or III
of the readme.txt file, to convince WinNT that it is a Plug-n-Play
operating system, before installing
the driver would work. (If you ever need to do this, make sure that
the BIOS is configured for a PnP OS;
if you have WinNT installed, it may very well be configured for a
non-PnP OS.)

Thanks, protonmaster, gbeech, and felthat. Turns out I had an outdated
version of awent40.exe that didn't have the full readme.txt
instructions. felthat's comment helped me realize that, and
protomaster's link led me to the most recent version of awent40.exe.
The sound card is working now!