As many people know, Creative Labs has virtually zero customer support and makes the shoddiest drivers ever for their products.
I wasn't until about a year after Vista was launched that I could use all the features on my X-Fi XtremeMusic and now, as many people are having, there's another whole host of problems with Windows 7, in spite of drivers being programmed for it.
Anyway, here's an overview of the problem and how to fix it (as best as possible)
Symptoms:
Constant crackling and popping in the sound. When trying to play a music file, it will often stop working after a few seconds of making all sorts of horrible noises.
Cause:
Creative Labs are unfamilliar with the fact that a lot of people use a 64 bit O/S with 4 GB RAM on nForce Mobos (maybe occurs on other chips too?). There is a problem with the address space when the maximum addressable memory is over 4 GB.
Fix:
- Start msconfig, go to the advanced boot options and set max mem to 4096. You will lose a load of memory and get a performance hit, but this is the only thing that seems to work reliably.
- The alternative is to disable the sound card in the device manager and to enable it again once the computer is started up and running. When I play the Half-Life 2 cinematic mod for example, I really need the use of all 4 GB of my RAM, so this is what I do and I haven't had any issues. The sound works fine until I quit the game and run another application. Then I have to disable the card in the device manager again and restart the computer again and start over to get sound back. Sometimes it just seems to start working again on its own. It's terribly unreliable, but it's the only way to use 4 GB and the X-Fi
- Don't expect any help from Creative. I have tried all the drivers I can find to no avail. Everyone hails Daniel_K's modded drivers (the X-FI Support Pack 2.0) but this didn't make any difference for me and as far as I can see, the drivers are not actually modded at all anyway.
Hopefully someone will come up with something better.
I wasn't until about a year after Vista was launched that I could use all the features on my X-Fi XtremeMusic and now, as many people are having, there's another whole host of problems with Windows 7, in spite of drivers being programmed for it.
Anyway, here's an overview of the problem and how to fix it (as best as possible)
Symptoms:
Constant crackling and popping in the sound. When trying to play a music file, it will often stop working after a few seconds of making all sorts of horrible noises.
Cause:
Creative Labs are unfamilliar with the fact that a lot of people use a 64 bit O/S with 4 GB RAM on nForce Mobos (maybe occurs on other chips too?). There is a problem with the address space when the maximum addressable memory is over 4 GB.
Fix:
- Start msconfig, go to the advanced boot options and set max mem to 4096. You will lose a load of memory and get a performance hit, but this is the only thing that seems to work reliably.
- The alternative is to disable the sound card in the device manager and to enable it again once the computer is started up and running. When I play the Half-Life 2 cinematic mod for example, I really need the use of all 4 GB of my RAM, so this is what I do and I haven't had any issues. The sound works fine until I quit the game and run another application. Then I have to disable the card in the device manager again and restart the computer again and start over to get sound back. Sometimes it just seems to start working again on its own. It's terribly unreliable, but it's the only way to use 4 GB and the X-Fi
- Don't expect any help from Creative. I have tried all the drivers I can find to no avail. Everyone hails Daniel_K's modded drivers (the X-FI Support Pack 2.0) but this didn't make any difference for me and as far as I can see, the drivers are not actually modded at all anyway.
Hopefully someone will come up with something better.
My Computer
- Computer Manufacturer/Model Number
- Home Built
- OS
- Windows 7 x64 Build 7600.16384
- CPU
- Athlon 64 6000+
- Motherboard
- Asus M2N4-SLI
- Memory
- 4 GB DDR PC6400
- Graphics Card(s)
- GeForce 8800 GTS O/C to 600/900
- Sound Card
- Soundblaster X-Fi XtremeMusic
