Well, to follow up with my experience. The sound card, a Sound Blaster Live 5.1 card, DIED!
I got an RMA number and sent the card off to be replaced as it still was under warranty. The tech rep tried to talk me out of it. He said for the price of shipping I could get a new card. Hmmm. I work in an office where we ship stuff every day. I knew that was BS. Shipping cost me $3.13.

But I digress. After the sound card died, the computer would not even boot. As soon as I took it out, I could boot to both Knoppix and Windoze.

Toward the end, the computer acted more and more bizarrely. Get this: Windoze XP saw the card as a network card and tried to configure it as that. Knoppix just refused to load the sound module. That tipped me off. Thank you Linux for giving me the correct information to solve my bizarre computer behavior.

As soon as I pulled the card out, everything was back to normal. I have temporarily replaced the Sound Blaster with the old Vortex 8810 (using the 2.6.9 kernel.) I sounds great. I just can't use it with kernel 2.4, which is what I use most of the time. It's the only one that sees ALL my hardware.

Whew!!! What a bizarre ride.

sakiZ