SB Titanium will not work under Win7

TheHeadhunter said:

Re: setting BIOS to what I have and want to run, the only options in Setup are on, off, auto for onboard sound. While I had my X-Fi Xtreme Audio card working, it was set to Auto. I set it to off yesterday, then turned it back on so I could work. What do you suggest?

Thanks!

If you're going to use the X-FI Titanium card then the on-board sound needs to be "off".

As to removing the software, check "Programs and Features" under "Control Panel". If you don't see any Creative software installed, you're good, if you do, uninstall. If you have trouble uninstalling, try reinstalling the software as I described the first time.

Good luck.

@sygnus21 & Techymike: Success! You guys rock!

I usually "follow instructions" but my new Titanium card came from Buy.com in a ziploc bag with a CD. No instructions at all. So I used what I know... and it wasn't good enough.

Key things you guys suggested that got the card to work:

1. Turning off onboard sound on my pc.
2. Installing the card without any Creative software or drivers on the pc.

Where I went wrong to begin with:

1. I popped the card in and installed the drivers without turning off onboard sound and without deleting the old Creative software.
2. It all went downhill from there.

For others who might benefit (I hope I can give something back to this forum, which is the ONLY place I got advice that actually helped):

1. Before installing the SB (in my case a vanilla Titanium), pull any old sound card (obviously) and delete all Creative sofware and drivers thru Control Panel/Programs (add/remove). Don't forget to look under both "Creative" AND "Soundblaster." I had Creative apps in both categories and after I removed the Creative stuff I thought it was all gone -- there was more under Soundblaster farther down in the list.

2. Reboot your pc. During booting, hit F2 to go to Setup. Open the section that includes onboard sound. Turn OFF onboard sound. Reboot the pc.

3. Turn the pc off. Install the Soundblaster adapter. (Failing to do (1), (2) and (3) from the start led me to waste hours of my time. Turn the pc back on.

4. In my case, Win7 Updater automatically went out and found the SB drivers. Some suggest disabling Win7 Updater, but in my case it worked fine. As soon as Win7 installed the Creative drivers, it asked me to reboot, which I did.

5. As soon as I rebooted, the Creative Upater came up and I used it to find latest drivers. These got installed by the Updater. Took quite a bit of time -- there's a lot of stuff! I checked the version numbers, and it had installed the correct drivers for Win7. So did the sound work? ... nope...

6. Now here's where my three-day frustration got the better of me. When you get frustrated you start to rush, and when you rush you make mistakes. After all these steps, Device Manager recognized the adapater AND the drivers were all loaded -- versions were correct for a Win7 system. But still no sound. So I calmed myself down -- at least the card was now recognized and you guys had gotten me farther than I'd gotten before. Why was I getting no sound? Well... I eat humble pie on this, guys, but I figure by admitting it someone else might not have to eat it... Listen carefully: It turns out that installing/uninstalling that Titanium card so many times and plugging/unplugging my speaker cable into the card made me sloppy, and the last time I did it I plugged my speakers into the LINE IN jack... you can stop shaking your heads at the dope now... Speakers don't work unless they're plugging into the SPEAKER/OUT jack...

7. Everything works. The Titanium is recognized in Device Manager, I get sound, the Creative apps work and I can record What U Hear (that's what started this whole thing...).

I can't think you guys enough. Creative and Buy.com could have saved me a lot of hassle (and you the time you so generously gave me) if they'd included a slip of paper with some simple installation instructions -- turn off onboard sound, delete old SB software before physically installing the card.

I hope that something I've shared helps out someone else.

Now all I need to figure out is how to disable the boot message that tells me my "front panel" isn't working... That's the mic and headphone jacks on the front of my Dell XPS. The old SB had a cable that connected to those jacks... the Titanium has a set of "front panel" pins on the card for this same purpose, but only 5 pins (vs 8 on the Xtreme Audio adapter), so I can't make the connection. Is this a standard cable I can buy? Think I'll call Dell... It's a minor annoyance because I have to hit F1 during boot to bring the system up...

Thanks again!

Thanks. I'm glad we were able to help.

Happy listening :)

OOPs! Already been posted.

Glad to hear you got it fixed, sorry to be repsponding so late!