Ok, at Dell Support Forums there are no answers for me. Here my history.
The original pc becomes with WinXP Home and the SoundMax work fine,
including old DOS games running under a CMD window.
For best performance, quit XP formating hd and install Windows 2000 Pro
SP4. Download the sound drivers from Dell site for this OS. Now on the
machine, when start Win2000, don't work the sound for the old DOS games.
Appear a "no CMDLine found, blaster no enable" message. A permanent low
noise hear on the speaker that is persistent including the speakers are
power-off.
I think the drivers haves errata. The SoundMax site don't support help
(only links to Dell, Compaq, etc). At the Dell Forums, they say the low
noise problem was detected on other Dell pc models, but there is no
solution yet.
Help me please!

For best performance? You would be way ahead to reinstall the operating
system that has drivers for your hardware and then just turn off ALL the
add on features that were included to "turn Windows 2000 into XP". In
other words turn OFF all the eye candy, system restore, indexing etc.
and you will have a working system thats fast.

josepe wrote:

> Ok, at Dell Support Forums there are no answers for me. Here my history.
> The original pc becomes with WinXP Home and the SoundMax work fine,
> including old DOS games running under a CMD window.
> For best performance, quit XP formating hd and install Windows 2000 Pro
> SP4. Download the sound drivers from Dell site for this OS. Now on the
> machine, when start Win2000, don't work the sound for the old DOS games.
> Appear a "no CMDLine found, blaster no enable" message. A permanent low
> noise hear on the speaker that is persistent including the speakers are
> power-off.
> I think the drivers haves errata. The SoundMax site don't support help
> (only links to Dell, Compaq, etc). At the Dell Forums, they say the low
> noise problem was detected on other Dell pc models, but there is no
> solution yet.
> Help me please!
>

Some users go far away installing Win98 by left Windows XP. We are
realist, WinXP is too "hard" and need more resources to do the same work
that Win2000.
But my problem is around the sound drivers. Other users reports same
problem on the Dell Forums, using WinXP and others Win2000 too.