Creative drivers break my system in many different ways

photonman62 · 05 Aug 2011

I've recently reinstalled Windows 7. Completely wiped my system partition and installed W7 there from scratch. I am now having huge problems with audio.

First thing I would like to mention is that I had none of these problems on my previous installation. Audio worked perfectly.

Well, first thing I notice is audio doesn't work. Drivers are, of course, not present. So I install my trusty Daniel_k drivers for my Audigy SE using the setup.exe. First thing I notice - static. Not hardware related, because when the drivers weren't there I got complete silence. Next thing I notice is that as soon as I restart my computer, it locks up. Explorer.exe is dead (can't drag selection boxes on desktop, taskbar is not responding). The mouse then stops moving and I hear a continuous loop of the last half-second of audio that was played. Have to hard-reboot the PC.

I've isolated this issue to the Creative drivers. I uninstalled all the Creative programs (audio control panel, all that junk). System was a bit more stable, could drag selection boxes etc. now. But the static was still there. Went to the playback options and got to a button that said something like "only digital output". Checked it - static was gone. "Great", I thought. Played some music in foobar2000 - nothing. unchecked the box - music blasts loudly for one second and the whole PC freezes again with the infinite loop.

I've reformatted and reinstalled W7 twice to no avail. Problem is still present. This is all after installing all the W7 updates (SP1 is integrated into the OS), but I doubt this makes any difference.

The drivers from Windows Update have the same problem, as do the official Creative drivers from their site.

At the moment I am connected to my onboard audio, no issues. This is not a solution for me, though, as I want to use my sound card. Anyone know something that might help? The most surprising thing is that after multiple reformats it didn't work at any time.

TVeblen · 06 Aug 2011

Sorry if this is obvious, but have you tried going into the BIOS settings and disabling the onboard audio chip before installing the sound card?

DalekOverSeer · 06 Aug 2011

TVeblen said:

Sorry if this is obvious, but have you tried going into the BIOS settings and disabling the onboard audio chip before installing the sound card?

agree, if that doesn't work try another pci slot if you can.

photonman62 · 07 Aug 2011

I doubt that something like that would fix it, since I didn't have to do anything like that on my last stable install. Eh, might as well try that.

TVeblen · 07 Aug 2011

Yeah, all of these diagnostic tests we suggest in a situation like this is just to eliminate any other possible causes because we all hope that it is not the obvious reason: the card has failed.

photonman62 · 08 Aug 2011

Nope, neither of those suggestions worked. The card certainly hasn't failed, it's the software doing it.

DalekOverSeer · 08 Aug 2011

ok one more thing you can try. i had problems under vista with my creative x-fi not always installing properly after a clean install of windows. what i did was uninstall the card through device manager and it's drivers. then i would restart the system. that would do the trick every time for me. if it works for you what should happen is once rebooted windows should find your card and install the default windows drivers. also make sure that it selects the proper speaker setting, from time to time the creative software will select the wrong configuration.

Wishmaster · 08 Aug 2011

Have you tried the official drivers or is there one for Audigy SE?

Im not sure about the Daniel K drivers, never had need to try them, but I can say that Ive had no problems what-so-ever with the official 64bit drivers.

Might be worth a try.

DalekOverSeer · 08 Aug 2011

Wishmaster said:

What card do have? A X-Fi?

Have you tried the official drivers? Im not sure about the Daniel K drivers, never had need to try them, but I can say that Ive had no problems what-so-ever with the official 64bit dirvers.
Might be worth a try. .

wishmaster yes i have the creative x-fi xtreme audio.

i should of said use the default creative drives as well. i'm not sure about the daniel k drivers either. my previous card was an audigy and with it and my current x-fi i have never had probs with the default drivers.

wishmaster
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=288948

photonman62 · 09 Aug 2011

DalekOverSeer said:

ok one more thing you can try. i had problems under vista with my creative x-fi not always installing properly after a clean install of windows. what i did was uninstall the card through device manager and it's drivers. then i would restart the system. that would do the trick every time for me. if it works for you what should happen is once rebooted windows should find your card and install the default windows drivers. also make sure that it selects the proper speaker setting, from time to time the creative software will select the wrong configuration.

Wishmaster said:

Have you tried the official drivers or is there one for Audigy SE?

Im not sure about the Daniel K drivers, never had need to try them, but I can say that Ive had no problems what-so-ever with the official 64bit drivers.

Might be worth a try.

As I clearly said in my first post, I have an Audigy SE sound card and tried both the drivers from Windows Update and the official Creative drivers from their website. All had the same problem, and I was sure to uninstall every trace of the previous driver before installing a new one.

I don't think there is anything I can do about this, it just randomly stopped working on a new install of W7 and any next reformats/reinstalls did not help. I guess I'm just one unlucky guy.