From:
http://arstechnica.com/guide/building/bios/bios-1.html15M - 16M Memory Hole/Memory Hole
Options: Enable, Disable
This should always be disabled for modern systems. In the old days, ISA cards used the 15th megabyte for their own purposes. Modern ISA cards don't need this (EISA or PNP-ISA) and neither do PCI cards with one major exception -- Sound Blaster PCI128 and Sound Blaster Live cards like this to be enabled. It essentially removes 1MB of your RAM, so consider replacing the sound card instead. The SB16 emulation of those two cards is the business here -- don't
install it and this shouldn't be a problem. Nevertheless, it's another
suspect for crashes associated with the Sound Blaster. To replace SB16 emulation, try using VDMSound, which gives emulated sound for DOS programs in NT4, 2000, and XP, and doesn't need any special drivers.
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Some time ago, Nuttz suggested I disable SB16 emulation. I did and the instances of dropped vox immediately went down. Makes sense, eh?
curly