By Stephen Bucaro

Today's computer equipped with a sound card is capable of generating sound from many different sound and music format files. Formats include WAV, MIDI, MP3, and many more.

Conversion of these sound format files to actual audio relies on several layers of software and hardware. The most basic sound format file compatible with Windows operating system is WAV file format. Before troubleshooting any of more complex formats, make sure that your system is capable of playing WAV files.

The Windows operating system has a built-in program called Sound Recorder to record and play WAV files. To open Sound Recorder, select Start | Programs | Accessories | Entertainment and click on Sound Recorder. In Sound Recorder program, select File | Open. In Open dialog box, navigate to C:WindowsMedia and select one of WAV files to play. Click Open button and then Play button (right arrow).

If you hear WAV file play, then your basic sound configuration is working properly. If you did not hear WAV file play, continue reading (troubleshooting problems with more complex sound file formats will be covered in future article).

The first thing you should do is eliminate obvious possibilities. Many speakers have a volume control on one of speakers. Many times I have thought that sound was not working in one of my programs, only to find that someone turned volume control all way down.

You can test your speakers by plugging them into headphone jack on your CD-ROM drive and playing a music CD. This bypasses sound card.

Check Windows Volume Control by right-clicking on speaker icon in Task Bar and Selecting "Open Volume Contols" in popup menu that appears.

Open Multimedia utility in Control Panel (Start | Settings | Control Panel) and select Audio tab. Make sure that your soundcard's Playback device is selected in Playback section.

By Stephen Bucaro

Msdos.sys was one of three files (along with io.sys and command.com) that DOS 6 and earlier versions was composed of. It was a binary file that created a disk buffer and file control block for service routines, and performed hardware initialization. Beginning with Windows 95, msdos.sys was combined into io.sys and new msdos.sys became a text editable configuration file.

Msdos.sys is a hidden system file located in root of your boot drive. To view hidden files, in Explorer's "View" menu select "Folder Options". In "Folder Options" dialog box click on "View" tab and under "Hidden Files" check "Show all files". You may want to make a backup copy of msdos.sys named msdos.sys.bak before you make any changes to file.

There are three sections to msdos.sys. The [Paths] section tells Windows where to find necessary startup files. The WinDir= entry contains path to folder containing operating system. The WinBootDir= entry contains path to boot folder. The WinBootDrv= entry contains letter of boot drive. You shouldn't make any changes to this section.

The [Options] section is used to configure startup settings. The last section of file is filler to make sure file is at least 1,024 characters long. Before you can edit msdos.sys file you need to right-click on file name and in "Properties" dialog box that appears, uncheck Read-only attributes check box.

The [Options] section can contain up to 16 entries. The default msdos.sys usually contains only five entries. You can edit these settings in Notepad for purposes of debugging or just to make it start faster. Below is a list of some useful entries.

AutoScan - Controls whether Windows runs ScanDisk after an improper shutdown. If you have a large hard disk, ScanDisk can take a long time. You may want to prevent it from running automatically. Setting AutoScan=0 prevents ScanDisk from running automatically.

BootGUI - Controls whether your system starts in Windows mode or DOS 7 mode. Setting BootGUI=0 causes it to start in DOS mode. (Note: Windows Me does not support booting in DOS mode, so this will have no effect.)