Well Hello....
I have a problem, if anyone can solve it they will become my new God.

I have a new PC, with a Sapphire Motherboard, it's either the
Axion A3-A275 ( ATI A3-M275 Chipset) or the
Axion A3-A293 ( ATI A3-M293 Chipset).

Processor is AMD Athlon XP2400, RAM = 1Gig.
OS = Windows XP Pro.
AC97 Onboard Sound (Device name = ALi Audio Wave)

I've been trying to install my Creative Labs SoundBlaster Platinum Live! 5.1 soundcard, with front bay "Live Drive".

I have failed miserably.

Following suggestions from other forums, friends, the guy who sold us the PC and general "voices" I have tried the following.

1)Disabling onboard sound in the BIOS.
2) Trying different PCI slots.
3) Removing the Network Card in case of IRQ conflicts.
4) Trying my old Soundblaster 16 card to see if the Platinum Sound Card was broken.
5) Cursing like a fishwife and contemplating extreme violence.

None of these worked, Windows continually fails to even register the hardware using "Plug & Play" or manually via searching for newly installed Hardware components.

If anyone has any other ideas as to things I can try that don't involve kicking the PC to death I would be so very grateful.

Problem 2) The Graphics.
According to the guy who sold us the PC, this Sapphire Motherboard, with it's integrated ATI card and chipset should be capable of running the most taxing game.

It fails to run Sega's "House of the Dead 2", not the most demanding game by a long shot.

The RAM is assignable, so on a system with 1 Gig of RAM, so we tried assigning 256 MB to the graphics card.

This made the PC "angry", it gave us a pretty blue screen with many error messages, then it crashed.

We then tried installing the graphics card from my old PC, an ATI All-In-Wonder card with 32MB Graphics Memory all of it's own.
This has dramatically improved the graphics, but we are left wondering what the hell the original graphics chip did.
Should we have to install a really old graphics card to get games running?
Or should we send the entire PC back to the seller and ask for something that works?

Any comments, or suggestions as to rectifying these two problems will be greeted with JOY (yes, capital letters!) and much clapping of hands.

Thanking you all.