First thing you should do is UPDATE WINDOWS!!!!
Service pack 3 will help you big time.
Uninstall Sound Taxi, it has audio drivers which may interfere with the game.
When you go do a windows update, select the 'custom' option. Windows will find updated drivers for your ESS sound card. They're not going to be anything recent, but they will be newer than your 9 year old audio drivers you have now.
There may also be some Motherboard chipset drivers in the 'custom' windows update when you run it.
HTH
