A few Creative Sound Blaster Z problems. (Sleep Mode, Front Ports)

I have a few issues with my Sound Blaster Z card...

The first is that when my computer wakes up from sleep mode the sound stops functioning. In Foobar2000 I get this error message.

Unrecoverable playback error: A device attached to the system is not functioning. (0x8007001F)

I can't get any sound from the device but it still shows up in my device manager. When I restart my computer everything is normal and working again.


Second I'm not sure how to get it setup so that when I unplug my headphones from the front port the sound comes out of my monitor. I always have to change my default device in the control panel.

Any help would be great!

matts6887 said:

Even though the device still shows up in the device manager; there still could be something causing some sort of glitch here. i would completely uninstall the sound blaster in the device manager; reboot; and reinstall the drivers using the disc that came with the sound card(if you have the disc) and then update the drivers and other sound blaster software if there are any updates available for it.

Thanks for the response.

So I uninstalled the drivers and the software and re-installed in the order you said. Now instead of my device not functioning after sleep mode it will work but it asked me to select a new default device in my sound blaster software and in Foobar2k and I had to pick "Sound Blaster Z 2" which exists now instead of the original "Sound Blaster Z". My monitor is still silent too when I unplug from the front port.

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Greetings Lukelbs. Sleep mode issues with the Sound Blaster Z are well documented, they (creative) did release updated drivers that they claim should have fixed the issue, it didn't. The only work around is to actually restart the computer.
My advise it to download the latest driver and give it a shot: Creative Worldwide Support > Sound Blaster Z
As for the front panel issue; I was among the early adopters of Sound Blaster Z last May. It was the worse mistake I ever made. The card worked perfectly for about 15 minutes, then the driver caused a blue screen. That issue was corrected with a driver release but then the front panel no longer switched back and forth between my analog headset and analog speakers. They release two more drivers none fixed the issue. I spent over $80 in shipping for all four Sound Blaster Zs they sent me in addition to well over 250 hours trouble-shooting the issue before I finally upgraded to an older X-FI Titanium Fatality Pro. I have not reinstalled Windows since the last time I tried a SBZ, my front panel does the same as you have reported. In short: The front panel will not function correctly until you replace the SB Z with another card and reinstall windows.