Sound Card

[Garry Russell]

A few weeks ago the PSU went on my PC and corrupted the Stripe raid making the hard drives unreadable.

It's been a bit protracted as I am still unable to sit long at the machine and certainly can't drag it out and pull it apart.

I still need it for vital checking and for sending stuff so I was stuck

My nephew eventually got a new HD in and windows was loaded on that and with the help of Ben Watson I finally got the two old disks formatted for use.

However there is no sound

After the corruption the sound card and video card could not be found and only removing them and refitting them after the windows install got them to be recognised.

The video card went OK but when the sound card driver was updated it vanished off the system

On start up new hardware is found but despite pointing it to where the driver is it says it can't be found then it dissappeared again. Putting it another slot got it once more recognised and working but after the driver loaded it said it need updating which was done and afterward the sound card was gone off the system again...only the onboard can be seen.

So again tonight he swapped slots but this time the driver could not be found even though the drive is pointed to it...then the soundcard is once more gone from the system.......that is this time it didn't initialise at all, rather than before when it did work breifly before updating the driver killed it.........followed by restarting finding it then the wizzard not finding the driver.

It was suggested yearday I disable the onboard in the BIOS which I did but that only meant there was nothing in the sound list rather than the onboard which is not usuable and does not have the right ports for my speakers and in anycase I'm not using that for the reasons I bought and upgraded soundcard in the first place.

So stalemate. The machine goes on, the new harware is found the driver can't be found by the wizzard and so the card fails to initilise and dissappears.

I was for a time getting an unknown PCI device error occuring and reloaded the chipset to no avail. Runing CC tools got rid of that error

The card is a Soundblaster X-FI Extreme Gamer Fatality Pro Series.

Anyone have any idea??

Garry

[tonymadge]

Is it shown in device manager? if so delete it or in software unsinstall it. The reinstall it and reinstall it with the old drivers when it asks for newer drivers can you ignore that?

[Garry Russell]

No Tony

When it worked it showed and then corrupted it shows as unknown device.

Yes...we delete it but when it's rebooted it just enter another unknown device entry.

We are using the old drivers gived off the net for that actual type... it is them that got it to read first killed by the update but know it is not reading the old drivers bcause the wizzard can't find them even though the drive in the wizzard is pointing at them.

It basically won't read the drivers

There are no other drivers...no CD came with the machine.

Garry

[ianhind]

There is a known problem that sometimes hardware is not visible in Device Manager even with "Show hidden devices" checked.

Perhaps the sound card is one of those and needs to be uninstalled using the following process:

1. Click Start, click Run, type cmd.exe, and then press ENTER.
2. Type set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 and then press ENTER.
3. Type Start DEVMGMT.MSC, and then press ENTER.
4. Click View, and then click Show Hidden Devices.
5. Expand the Sound, video and game controllers.

You might want to consider uninstalling any dimmed (grey) devices.

Hope it helps.

Ian

[DaveB]

Cor Blimey Guv

Creative cards are the only ones that have ever done this to me and it's most frustrating. They like to install in their own way using drivers off a genuine disc and even then, this is no guarantee the software will load I've also found they don't like having drivers updated as this more often than not leaves you with permanent sound probs and CTD's

Try that jiggery pokery Ian has suggested and try to be facing the promised land while you're typing

Good luck mate

ATB

DaveB

[Garry Russell]

Thanks guys

Ian...I'll try that when my nephew comes back about 1500 and see how it goes.

It reminds me of the early VIC 20 days when the computer would get itself stuck in a loop .

Problem I have at them moment is after weeks of this first with a power supply on the laptop and now power supply on the PC and the HD and video card probs I start to ask myself if I need all this and really I could do without it

So miserable old git mode at the moment

Right thanks again and see what happens later

Garry

[ianhind]

Try that jiggery pokery Ian has suggested and try to be facing the promised land while you're typing

Oops - forget to mention that, and standing on one leg with fingers crossed

[Garry Russell]

Well.......I'm getting to thepoint where I'll try anything
Garry

[Garry Russell]

Ian

Thanks for that..it worked

After running it the sound card driver loaded. On reboot it found new hardware agin but we deleted the Creative auto update from programmes and a further reboot had it come up clean

Not to start setting things up

Garry