A few weeks ago I sent my Pentium III computer to a computer technician who reformatted the hard drive and reinstalled Windows 98. On the return of the computer I reinstalled the SoundBlaster drivers as there was no sound. Now there is an error message which does not go away, even after clicking “Close”. The message is ‘DEVLDR16 caused an invalid page fault in module kernel32.dll at 0187:bff88396′. Shutting down the computer is the only way to close the message. How do I get around this? I am running Windows 98.

The DEVLDR16 program is used by the SoundBlaster drivers for SB16 emulation. This allows older DOS programs and games to use your sound card. If you do not currently play any DOS games, and do not have any intention of playing them in the future, then the easiest way to fix this problem is to simply disable SB16 emulation. A neat way of doing this can be found at www.driverguide.com/forums/sound/crea/messages/7036.html. Be aware that you should follow these instructions at your own risk as I have been unable to test them. Another way to stop DEVLDR16 loading is to simply search for DEVLDR16.EXE and rename this file as something else. In order to rename this file, you may have to either boot into Safe Mode or boot into DOS. This may be the case if the file is in use by Windows (as you cannot rename the file while it is in use). You can boot into Safe Mode or DOS by pressing F8 when the ‘Starting Windows 98′¦’ message appears (just before the Windows splash screen) and selecting the relevant option from the Windows startup menu. It is always a good idea to rename files rather than deleting system files in case they are needed in the future. However, if you do need SB16 emulation (because you are playing DOS games) then unfortunately, I have yet to find a solution. If you do need SB16 emulation, please let me know and I will continue to research the problem for you.