This one has me stumped! Recently reinstalled my Win98SE OS. After the installation no sound of any kind, not even MIDI files. Noticed a problem in my Control Panel / Multimedia. Normally I have for both Playback and Record, "ESS AudioDrive (220)". It is now gone. Found the problem in the Device Manager. Under Sound, Video, Game Controller there was a new entry for "Wave Device for Voice Modem". Never had this entry before. The properties of this entry matched what was listed in my Multimedia. I reinstalled both drivers for my modem and sound card. Still nothing. Ran dxdiag. Sound test 1, 2, & 3 showed the incorrect wave modem instead of ESS AudioDrive. In my multimedia the AudioDrive is not even an option. It is not listed anywhere. This is my modem and sound card:
Modem: US Robotics 56k Voicefax Internal
Sound Card: ESS Technologies (ES 1869)
Any suggestions? Thanks.

You might want to try this method:
First uninstall both the modem and sound card and any devices flagged as having a problem or listed under OTHER or UNKNOWN DEVICES in Device Manager.
Then shutdown pc and remove cover and remove the modem, leaving the sound card installed.
Power up pc. When sound card is detected and drivers are requested, click have disk and point to the drive/folder containing the sound card drivers. When finished, check to insure sound is working ok. Note: a reboot may be necessary after sound driver is installed.
Before you shutdown and install the modem, let's assume your modem is pnp. That means in order for it to work (when it's installed later), your pc must have free resources for it, eg: irq, com port, i/o address. Check in Device Manager | Computer | Properties to insure you have either com1 or com 2 free. If you don't then free up com2 by entering pc bios after reboot and disable com2. After making this change, power down, install modem in slot, power back up, when modem is detected click have disk and point to drive/folder where modem drivers are located and continue til finished.
If you have devices connected to both com1 and com2 then the modem will not work using com2 settings. However, if your pc is like most and is only using com1 for say a serial mouse but nothing connected to com2 then it will be safe and ok to install in this manner by disabling com2 in bios thereby allowing the modem to use that resource. :)

YEOW ! ! ! This will take some time. I'm an intermediate when it comes to PC's. I knew I should have majored in Computer Science instead of Business. I'll get back to you Jerry as soon as I can. Thanks.

It's me again. Thanks for your patience. Did exactly as you suggested. These are the results:

Volume Control restored to system tray. In volume control under "Wave Balance" is the problem. There is a volume slider for all sounds. To the right of the wave balance slider are three red blocks which denote some type of error. All others are fine. Tested MIDI files. No problem. Tested .wav files. Got error msg: hardware not responding, error code 80040256. It appears there is a wave device conflict. When speakers are on there is a rapid ticking sound. All drivers are updated and appear OK. While trying to connect to a radio station, the music constantly rebuffers.

Would a new modem and sound card solve this? Thanks again.