X-fi Titanium HD install nightmare. Win7 64

[Mewp]

Hey everyone. I just purchased a X-FI Titanium HD. I thought this would be a walk in the park...boy was I wrong. lol.

I'm using Windows 64 ultimate, All updates are current. Windows installs device as "High definition audio device"
I uninstalled all the occurrences and installed the latest driver then restarted. Now I get this in device manager.

My speaker icon has a red x and when clicking on it. I get this.

I have Realtek onboard, uninstalled and disabled before install. Just can't get this to work..Any suggestions? Could it be a driver conflict?

 

[dsperber]

Did you disable your onboard Realtek sound chip in the BIOS? You should do that, if you're going to use an external sound card like the X-Fi.

Also, did you select the X-Fi as your default sound in "Playback Devices"? Right-click on speaker icon in System Tray, select Playback Devices, and then select the X-Fi and push "set default" button. Then you can also set it up with Properties and Configure buttons.

 

[stormy13]

"High definition audio device" is Windows way of saying "I know there is an audio device there but I don't know exactly what audio device, so I am going to use a generic audio driver for it until you install the proper one".

What video card do you have? If the onboard audio is disabled it is likley that all those "High definition audio device" listings are from the video card if it has built in HDMI audio (Nvidia cards for some reason list up to 4 or more audio devices there from their cards that support HDMI audio).

 

[Mewp]

Did you disable your onboard Realtek sound chip in the BIOS? You should do that, if you're going to use an external sound card like the X-Fi.

Also, did you select the X-Fi as your default sound in "Playback Devices"? Right-click on speaker icon in System Tray, select Playback Devices, and then select the X-Fi and push "set default" button. Then you can also set it up with Properties and Configure buttons.

I uninstalled the onboard and disabled before installing the X-FI. When I mouse over the speaker it says "no audio output device installed"
and to select default is greyed out.

"High definition audio device" is Windows way of saying "I know there is an audio device there but I don't know exactly what audio device, so I am going to use a generic audio driver for it until you install the proper one".

What video card do you have? If the onboard audio is disabled it is likley that all those "High definition audio device" listings are from the video card if it has built in HDMI audio (Nvidia cards for some reason list up to 4 or more audio devices there from their cards that support HDMI audio).

I totally forgot about my 400 series cards doing that. I disabled both high definition audio controllers in system devices that matched the bus of my video cards.

 

[dsperber]

I uninstalled the onboard and disabled before installing the X-FI. When I mouse over the speaker it says "no audio output device installed"
and to select default is greyed out.

Fascinating.

Just out of curiosity have you tried manually reinstalling the actual driver from the Creative site? (actually, I just re-read your original post and it looks like you've already tried that)

I have an X-Fi Titanium card in my ASUS P5Q3 system, which also includes an onboard Realtek audio chip (which I've disabled in the BIOS, so it never shows up or gets drivers installed when I reinstall Win7). I also have an ATI HD4670 video card which has the usual HDMI (Realtek as well) audio support on it.

Note that I didn't disable the HDMI audio on the video card, as it didn't cause any conflict or mysterious symptoms. I simply had to select the "Speakers" for the X-Fi card as my default, and of course I didn't have my Properties and Configure buttons grayed out (as I do have sound).

I know I'm not giving you any solution to your problem, but I just point out that with the Realtek HDMI driver installed (instead of the ATI HDMI driver) I have no problem with specifying the X-Fi card as my default sound device.

Just for the sake of comparison, what does Device Manager show is installed as the driver?

 

[Mewp]

What driver version is that in the link you posted? I d/led and tried installing

Looks like my device is already set to default. :/

 

[dsperber]

What driver version is that in the link you posted? I d/led and tried installing

The driver file that gets downloaded is XFTI_PCDRV_LB_2_17_0008.exe which is about 49MB.

When I run it I get the following initial window after the unpack finishes:

Obviously my device-detect had no problem finding my card, since I didn't get the failure message you've gotten trying to run the driver installer EXE.

Are you sure you didn't disable your X-Fi card itself, somehow?

Your error message screenshot trying to install the driver looks strange... that background and title is not what I would have expected from the current Creative installer. It looks like an older version of that blue background. You're sure you have the correct file downloaded? On the page whose link I posted, there is an "I agree" at the bottom and when you select that there is a popup for the save of the 49MB file. But then I have "always ask" set in Firefox, so that I can always put downloaded files in the proper target folder for future re-use.

Anyway, there's obviously something fundamentally wrong, if the device-detect on your machine is failing to see the X-Fi. You're sure you haven't disabled it or the PCI-e slot somehow???

 

[Mewp]

What driver version is that in the link you posted? I d/led and tried installing

The driver file that gets downloaded is XFTI_PCDRV_LB_2_17_0008.exe which is about 49MB.

When I run it I get the following initial window after the unpack finishes:

Obviously my device-detect had no problem finding my card, since I didn't get the failure message you've gotten trying to run the driver installer EXE.

Are you sure you didn't disable your X-Fi card itself, somehow?

I installed the creative Diag tool and got this error

 

[dsperber]

I installed the creative Diag tool

Where did you get that program from? Do you have a software CD that came with the card?

I don't have that program, so I can't run it myself.

 

[Mewp]

Here's the link
Creative Worldwide Support
digging deeper, I searched direct sound and it directly correlates with Directx. I ran dxdiag in run and got these errors

 

[dsperber]

After I posted my question, I DID find it and installed it.

Not surprisingly:

 

[stormy13]

The driver file that gets downloaded is XFTI_PCDRV_LB_2_17_0008.exe which is about 49MB.

Which won't work with the Titanium HD as it has its own driver different from the rest of the X-Fi cards,

Creative Worldwide Support > Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium HD

File Name : SBRL_PCDRV_LB_3_00_1004.exe
This download is a driver providing Microsoft® Windows® 7 and Windows Vista® support for Creative Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ Titanium HD. For more details, read the rest of this web release note.

P.S. Mewp please stop resizing your screen shots, makes them very hard to read without a magnifying glass.

 

[dsperber]

Your dxdiag screenshots are too small for me to see clearly. They've been resized I guess.

Anyway, it looks like our two CTAUD2K.SYS drivers differ on their dates. Mine is from 7/7/2010 and yours looks like it's from 5/2011. That may be because you have an X-Fi Titanium HD card, and mine is simply an X-Fi Titanium.

Anyway, my dxdiag output is as follows:

 

[Mewp]

Sorry guys, I'm just copying and pasting the img link from photobucket..

 

[dsperber]

Sorry guys, I'm just copying and pasting the img link from photobucket..

I use Imageshack, but does Photobucket provide a setting for indicating the intended size of your display screen?

Imageshack default is 800x600, but you can change it. I've specified 1024x768 so that the resize of large screenshots doesn't get shrunk too much.

If Photobucket has a similar setting, you should make it larger than whatever you currently have... which honestly is too small (especially since your Win7 has "normal 100%" font size, whereas mine is "medium - 125%" so that things for me are already 25% larger anyway).

 

[stormy13]

A Preferred Method of Uploading/Posting Screen Shots

 

[Mewp]

*Edit*

 

[Mewp]

Here we go.

 

[dsperber]

Much better. Thank you.

Anyway, I think the errors must all be just different costumes of the same basic problem. It's now clear that the Titanium HD driver is different from the regular Titanium driver... which is, unfortunately, one more variable that cannot be duplicated or tested by me since I don't have an HD card.

So we don't know if you've got a new hardware failure problem, or if there's an inherent problem in the Creative driver for the HD card.

But again... if this just started happening a week ago, what happened at that time? Did you install some software updates?

Do you have a System Image or System Restore Point from before a week ago that you can try going back to, to see if it resolves the problem?

 

[dsperber]

Here we go.

Interesting that the HD driver does not say "WHQL logo'd", as the regular driver does.