I FOUND A WAY for dos to work in windows xp.
the key is the combo of 2 programs...
vdmsound, found at http://ntvdm.cjb.net
this program emulates a sound card and combines with abandon loader, found at
http://www.angelfire.com/realm/zeroone/abandon.htm
so far my success rates are over 95% for getting games to work. The vdmsound integrates with abandon loader and allows you to customize the DMA, IRQ and PORT for soundblaster emulation. It works wonderfully, i tested it on 2 systems, and it is for nt/2000/XP.
All those fans of old games out there, celebrate!!!!

Chris, I haven't checked this out yet, but if you are right you're a freakin' genius, and my kids will proclaim you a saint.

I haven't had a chance either, but if it does work.....then I willl think you're a saint, and I'm 17... =)

Lol, i am only 17....yeh it works....the sound is sometimes not EXACT, but its very very close...there's another prog out there, soundfx 2000, that works for sound, but its pricey. if anyone does get it let me know.

SoundFX 2000 and VDMSound do things extremely differently. SoundFX 2000 routes commands to the sound card you've got. This means that with the latest line of SB cards that have no OPL3 chip your music is going to sound very odd, if at all. This program also does not account for any other changes made to the architecture of the card that might limit its DOS compatibility. For example, the Sound Blaster Live! comes with a DOS SB16 *emulator* because it doesn't have said AdLib support. This will not work in Windows NT.
VDMSound actually emulates ALL of the audio and sends it to your card as WAVE or DirectSound output. The AdLib emulation is pretty much straight from Jarek's fabulous OPL3 emulation (found in MAME), which is spot-on accurate. (Chances are the reason it doesn't sound right is because your old card wasn't playing the music correctly!)
You also don't need Abandon Loader. The VDMSound Launchpad (GUI for configuring VDMSound) is at http://vdmsound.sf.net/files. Enjoy.