Creative X-fi - no sound after restart

I had noticed that a lot of people first had sound issues with their Creative X-fi soundcards. Most of them sorted it out by running the Creative drivers in Vista compatibility mode, or by installing the support pack released by a member on the Creative support forums.

The problem for me is that when I do a fresh install the drivers (either the official or the support pack) I can hear sound properly from the speakers before the computer restarts. However once I restart to complete the driver installation, the sound is gone once Windows loads again.

If I do an uninstall of the drivers from device manager the sound comes back once again, but once I restart it is gone again.

I can't explain this weird behaviour but think somehow Windows is overwriting the drivers after a restart. I'm just wondering if anyone hear knows why this is happening the way it is?

I currently have a Creative X-fi Xtremegamer fatality pro, and 4GB ram. I also have a leadtek winfast pvr 2000 which installed properly and works fine (aside from no audio) so i'm wondering if that might be conflicting some how.

Any help would be appreciated.

I have a Xi-FI Xtremegamer card aswell and when I was installing new drivers before I was also losing sound. This includes with vista 64bit. The card and drivers were showing as working and the volume panel showed no errors either. When I uninstalled back to the old driver or system restored sound would come back.

Embarrassingly enough I found out new Creative drivers sometimes set your default playback device to a different one from which you were using before. Dunno if you have checked. We always assume its a driver issue or program failure >.< . Like, why the hell does Creative ALWAYS set my microphone volume to 8% every time I install a new driver?? EIGHT %!! That was another fun story...

Hi
I noticed you have a leadtek winfast pvr 2000 which installed properly and works fine under win7

I also have this tv card, but I can't make it work under win7 rtm 32b.
Could you tell me which driver to use and what you did to make it work ?
I tried all latest vista driver without success. Win7 freezes with a black screen during channel scan (under mce and winfast).

Thank you

keggee said:

I had noticed that a lot of people first had sound issues with their Creative X-fi soundcards. Most of them sorted it out by running the Creative drivers in Vista compatibility mode, or by installing the support pack released by a member on the Creative support forums.

How do you run the drivers in Vista compatibility mode?

JohnQuar said:

How do you run the drivers in Vista compatibility mode?

Right click on the exe and select Properties, then click on the Compatibility tab.

Hi, Finnaly after Hours of fiddeling out with it i have found the Solution! Here i go..

Basically install the Windows 7 64 bit driver from the Creative Website, then retsrat computer when prompted, then go into Device Manager (Computer/Properties/Device Manager) Then go to the audio tab find Creative Xfi Right click and click uninstall but DO NOT tick the delete software box then click OK. It will ask for a restart, restart the computer and when u get back onto windows, windows will start searching for the drivers for the Creative X-fi Sound card and will install it successfully (Hopefully :P) AND WOOOOOOOO your done play something relaxing :) and chill!

I hope this help all the people out there with the same issue! this was nto a creative issue i think its windows not giving full rights to install the driver! -.-. Anyway Enjoy!

I had this problem with my Soundblaster Xi-Fi Titanium HD after a clean Windows 10 reinstall. Mohammedali1992s solution worked perfectly for me, maybe there are others with the same problem.