Crashing at startup unless I unplug USB keyboard OR Soundcard  

Hi, hoping someone can help me out. I have a strange issue wherein after a clean install of Windows 7 64-bit, I get a hard crash (looping sound, forced shut down) around the login screen.

If I unhook the USB keyboard OR the Soundblaster Audigy SE card, the crash doesn't occur.
I can load up in safe mode +network just fine (where the audio device is disabled by default I noticed, while the keyboard still works), but I've spent hours trying to find the solution.

I've seen that there are problems with driver compatibility with Audigy cards and Windows 7, and I've seen that there can be a conflict with my ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe mobo and USB ports, but haven't found a solution through either route.

I KNOW there's a solution since I was running just fine this morning before doing a clean install (had a virus issue), and I thought I had just let windows update drivers last install and everything worked fine for months.

Any help would be hugely appreciated.

is there an 'enable legacy USB' setting in your bios?

You can try to enable and also try to disable the USB legacy support in the BIOS.

I assume you tried the keyboard in different USB slots but you might also want to uninstall the Sound Card in Device Manger and then try the card in a different slot on the board.

Hi all,

Thanks for the quick replies! Posting on the forums ended up having magical properties. The Legacy BIOS switch wasn't cutting it, at least for me, but I got it working.

What I ended up having to do was remove my password through safe mode so I could log in without a keyboard, let windows update the Audigy driver, then reboot with the keyboard plugged in. With the Windows-updated Audigy driver, the USB no longer caused a crash and was able to update fully. Hopefully this will work for anyone else having trouble installing Win7 with an Audigy card.