Go fix your computer. NOW! 
Getting ready to shut my machine off and replace the soundcard, once again. I have figured out what my problem was from my earlier attempt to use theM Audio card. The on-board AC '97 circuits were not shutting down, completely, even though I supposedly had them disabled and yet that issue was no problem for the Creative card. Hmmmmm.
It shouldn't be. You can have two sound cards installed at the same time, for as long as you don't get a hardware conflict, but Windows should be able to handle it. You don't get conflicts between other PCI cards, do you?
No HDW conflicts.
It had something to do with faulty "BIOS reporting" to Windows, in the early version of the VIA drivers - over my head to fix. The update seems to be working. MA card is installed and it has been running problem-free, since about two-ish this morning. I have restarted it a dozen times, hibernated it (my normal shut down at night) with multiple things running, started WMP, WinAmp, and EAC, together trying to crash it. So far so good.
The only weird thing is that Windows Media Player defaults to the on-board AC'97 each time I re-start the computer, so I suspect that the faulty reporting is still occurring on some level. I have to open WMP properties to select the sound device if I want to use it, after a re-start. Good thing I don't use it much. I use WinAmp, mostly, and it works, fine. I haven't used Audacity for encoding LPs, yet. I only do needledrops when all is quiet, in the house and I don't have that during the day, very often.
Thank you, Odeon, for embarrassing me into fixing my shit.
(I was very hesitant to re-install mobo drivers. I've learned (the hard way) to leave them alone, if they are working.)
My guess would be that it's a registry issue rather than Windows talking to the BIOS. Usually Windows ignores stuff at that level, if there aren't drivers forcing it to. But even then, it's probably a registry key that was left behind.
A search in regedt32 for AC97 will probably locate it for you.
I'm talking about a problem encountered during boot up. The last time I installed XP from scratch on this machine (previous install was unstable, done in May) it often stopped at the AC'97 driver and offered to open in safe mode, or try it again, as the only options. It was annoying, especially since I didn't want to use the on-board, anyway, and I knew I had it disabled in the device manager. At Tom's Hardware, after about ten emails with two different guys, I found out that I was having the problem from a packaged driver set (that came with this mobo) and I needed to install everything separately, but that was info I filed away for the next time, since this time it all worked (except for when I tried the MA card). I haven't had any trouble at all with this install, done last June. That's why I didn't want to take a chance on messing it up. It's done now, anyway, and no problems so far.
There are registry entries for AC'97, under Local Machine and Current User and they are all listed as, "value not set" in both areas. I am more inclined to believe the problem is in Windows Media Player registry entries, but I would need to do a lot more research to figure out what some of those ambiguously named entries do, before I start turning stuff off. I'm not afraid of the registry, but I don't like to alter an entry like ZIMGOING2FUKKUNTH3A55FORB3ING H3R3
(gibberish!) unless I'm sure I know what it does, even if it "looks" right. Call me chicken. I only used WMP when freedb.com was having problems, so I won't need to mess with it at all.
I don't have my tubes/valves/firebubbles hooked up, yet, but later tonight I will. I will need some quieter fans, especially the chipset fan, a tiny little noisy bastard that runs at a million rpm.
M Audio works, so I'm happy, now!
