Solved XtremeMusic PCI Card No Sound After Reboot

[Raillex]

I've been experiencing a weird problem with my SB XtremeMusic card recently and am at wit's end trying to fix it.

About every fourth or fifth reboot, I lose sound. The card still appears in device manager (with Windows reporting the device status as working properly) and the speaker icon still appears in my taskbar as it always does. The "Sound" tab in Control Panel shows everything configured exactly as it was before the reboot, and yet the card will still not output sound. The card worked fine for a couple of years and only started acting up a couple of months ago.

Installing the latest and older Windows 7 drivers from Creative doesn't fix the problem, and the only way I've been able to get sound to output again is by uninstalling the card in device manager and letting Windows redetect the card and automatically reinstall the software. The card works fine for several boot cycles, and then inexplicably stops working again. I'm getting real tired of this uninstall/reinstall routine, and was wondering if anyone has a solution.

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Raillex I know you have probably tried but try reseating the card and look at my ditty here I mainly use for RAM slots but the same principle applies - before you reseat the card

SLOTCLEANING

Now as for the slotsto clean them use a strip of old credit card about 1/2 inch wide nip thecorners off one end - preferably round them off hold a piece of thin lint free clothover the end dab on some form of alcohol - iso propyl alcohol (what we swab theskin with before an injection) is good and GENTLYswipe along the slots.

This can also be donefor the GPU slot/s.

 

[fireberd]

Do you have the on-board (on the motherboard) Sound disabled in the BIOS? It needs to be disabled or there can be potential conflicts with other sound cards, and could potentiall cause the problem you are having

 

[Raillex]

ICit2lol - I did try reseating the card when this first started happening with no luck. I'm pretty sure the PCI slot was clean as I used an air compressor to clean out the dust from my mobo and wiped the gold fingers on the sound card with alcohol when this first started happening, but I'll try your credit card method and see what happens.

firebird - Yes, the on board sound is both disabled in bios and absent in device manager. The only other entry under "Sound, video and game controllers" is AMD High Definition Audio Device. My graphics card is an AMD HD 7870. You don't think there's some sort of conflict between the two, do you?

Edit: I disabled the AMD HDAD entry in Device Manager for kicks and we'll see what happens. I don't use the card's HDMI port anyway, so this would be a good trade off if it works.

 

[fireberd]

I doubt that the HDMI audio will affect it.

 

[Raillex]

You're right. It only made it worse. Disabling HDMI caused me to lose sound on every reboot instead of every third or fourth.

Still stumped.

 

[fireberd]

If disabling the HDMI audio caused loss of sound, there is some conflict. HDMI should have no affect on "Speakers" (the SoundBlaster). HDMI affecting sound with a PCIe sound card suggests some type of problem or conflict on the PCIe bus??

 

[Raillex]

That's exactly what I was thinking. However, Windows isn't reporting any resource conflicts after a "soundless" reboot. My mobo (an Asus M4A89GTD Pro/USB) only has one PCI slot, so switching the card to another slot isn't an option.

 

[OvenMaster]

I had a similar problem about a year ago with my Diamond Xtreme 5.1 PCI card and two ASRock 880-GMLE mobos.

Out of the box, the first ASRock board would sometimes see the card and load drivers, other times, the sound would just stop and Device Manager wouldn't see the card. I RMA'd the mobo for an identical replacement. Everything went fine for 18 months until the problem started again. I swapped slots but that didn't help. I replaced the sound card and everything worked fine for one month until this problem again surfaced.

At that point my only option was to replace the mobo, so I put the Diamond card into a new Gigabyte board. No problems since June 2013.

 

[fireberd]

Aha! I see the issue (finally). You have a PCI sound card. The PCI slots on most new motherboards is not a true PCI slot, but merely a "bridged" PCI slot to the PCIe bus. Many PCI devices will either not work or not work correctly in a bridged PCI slot.

If you want to use a separate sound card, rather than the one built on the motherboard, best bet is a PCIe type sound card.

The bridged PCI slot is a major issue on the audio recording studio forums I visit.

 

[Raillex]

After Googling for a solution for several hours, I finally stumbled upon the (not very well articulated) fix. Here it is:

1. Open Creative Console Launcher and switch to Audio Creation Mode.

2. Click the "save" icon in the top right hand corner and enter a description for your existing configuration.

3. Open the 'Snapshot" tab and click on the name you just entered.

4. Close the Console Launcher.

5. Open the Windows 7 Shutdown menu and click on Sleep.

6. Wake your machine from sleep.

7. Shut the machine completely down, and the X-Fi will output sound on your next and subsequent reboots.

I've now gone through half a dozen shutdowns and cold boots without losing sound. Worked for me, and will hopefully work for you.

 

[fireberd]

You are lucky, many are not this fortunate with a "bridged" PCI slot motherboard and finally have to replace the PCI sound card with a PCIe model.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Glad to see it fixed