Windows 7 - Having trouble switching from Stereo to 5.1 in Win7x32

I tried to do some digging in the previous posts, but I couldn't find much.

I'm running Windows 7 Pro, 32bit. My Soundcard is a Creative SoundBlaster Live! Series WDM.

I have all my speakers plugged in, and I can decent quality audio from them, however the middle one doesn't function at all. The sub doesn't really sound like its supposed to either.

When I go into the

Control panel > Sound > I get two devices "Creative SB Live! Series (WDM)" and "Soundmax Integrated Digital Audio" are the two devices listed, when I press the configure button the only two options I have are Mono, and Stereo. On Windows XP, I had the option to pick 5.1 and I do not anymore.

When I went to the Creative website to download the driver for Win7Prox32, they only had the driver for 7Prox64.

So my question is this, what can I do to make this work? Under the control panel, I have no other sound related options to pick.

I tried installing the drivers listed on the Sticky, the automatic setup just gave me the error that no supported device was found.

So I tried to apply it manually as the instructions described, and now Windows keeps telling me there is no need to update, its up to date.

But I still have the same problem. .

First thing you need to do is disable the Integrated audio (the Soundmax) in the BIOS. With two sound devices enabled there can be conflicts. I don't know if this will solve the problem, but this has fixed similar problems for users in the past.

Done, however no change. Am I pretty much S.O.L. here? Anyone want to suggest to me a particularly nice external sound card in the $100 range? I really need something that will support 5.1, and I would like something that can process live electric instruments (guitar and bass) well. In the past I've had trouble with sound cards and latency/delay when playing with live instruments.