Aureal au8830 on XP sp2

I have tried various drivers and even found a patch that makes all the old contorl panel functions work but all the time I can only get sound out of the rear channels. Also note worthy is the mic seems to be 'locked on' everything you say comes straight back over speakers (rears only remember), a friend recons its a setting somewhere but I checked over everythign i can find, no joy. Still think it may be a driver issue.
Its a 4 channel card. Aureal vortex 2 au8830 chipset. win XP sp2, via266 chipset on mobo.
The card worked fine on this hardware setup running 98se!!!!

any ideas pls???