Asus Xonar driver breaks OS

Hi,
I tried searching for this issue or similar but it's an unusual one and difficult to search for so I'm hoping I've not overlooked a thread that contains the issue already.

Essentially I have the retail version of Windows 7 Home Premium and everything is fine until I install the Asus Xonar D2X drivers. I've tried at least 3 versions of the drivers that I could find online. The drivers themselves work and the software installs correctly, once installed the sound works and I get the Xonar control panel.

However, once those drivers are installed most of the applications I have, Firefox, Internet Explorer, MSN, Windows Update, etc etc stop functioning properly. In order to make them function I have to set them all to run as administrator giving the UAC prompt and also meaning that some plugins etc within the apps don't function properly.

I've managed to narrow it down to just the Xonar audio drivers through a process of elimination and system restores and it is 100% reproducible.

Curiously using my motherboard's supplied soundcard works perfectly so I'm using that as a temporary work around until I can find a resolution to the problem.

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.

Kif, welcome to the forums.

Have you had a look around over here,

ASUSTeK Computer Inc.-Forum-

to see if anyone else with the same card has reported the same issues (check the other sound card sub-forums while there as well). If it really is a problem with the drivers only Asus can really do anything about it, and if they don't know about it (either posted in their forums or through a support ticket) they can't fix it.

Hi, I have had a look there previously. Though, I'm not sure where to place blame on the issue it could just as easily be an OS problem rather than their software as their software works fine and worked perfectly in Vista without these issues, just that once it is installed on Win 7 everything else breaks.

In the interest of covering all bases I've posted there too.