Windows 7 - Creative Soundblaster Live 5.1

Good Afternoon,

I've recently installed the above card (SB Live 5.1) on my system which is running Win 7 ultimate 32-bit. Prior to installation, I checked with the Microsoft Windows7 compatability website and it states completely compatable.

Unfortunately, I get the red "x" in the taskbar icon indicating it is muted. The troubleshooter states "Hardware changes might not have been detected" and a yellow triangle icon with an exclaimation.

Any ideas as to what I should be looking for?

Thanks in advance.

df0807, welcome to the Seven Forums.

Let's start by finding out exactly which SB Live it is. Going to have to pull the card to find out, but what you are looking for is the model number; will look like either SBxxxx or CTxxxx. Once we have that then we can point you to the correct drivers, if there are any.

Model # to identify card

Creative Worldwide Support

Of course...

It is an SB0100

Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Compaq/IBM/HP (No AC-3decode) SB0100

Good news, I found it!

Creative Worldwide Support > Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 Digital (Dell)

Bad news, no driver for Windows 7.

This is specific for Live 5.1 for Dell, which you have.

About the best you're going to get with that old card is #4 here,

Creative Sound Cards.

as there is not now and never will be Windows 7 (or Vista for that matter) drivers for it.

Also make sure to make note of the ram limitation mentioned here,

SB Live! series Support Pack 2.0 (04/30/2010) - Creative Labs

You have to remember that when that card was new 2 GB was considered a lot, with 4 GB not even a consideration at the time. Without a complete re-write of the driver (and that isn't going to happen unless Creative releases the source code), there isn't much you can do.

Normally in a case like this I would recommend pulling the card and using the onboard sound, only one problem with that, your PowerEdge SC440 doesn't have any onboard sound. Try the drivers above and if you get the problems mentioned then you basically have one of two choices if you want sound,

1. Buy a new sound card that does have (and will continue to receive) Windows 7 support.

2. Pull 2 GB of ram so the driver can work properly.