[jackory]

Some time ago now in order to upgrade from ME to XP, I installed a duel boot system to ensure a safe transition.
Everything has gone very well with one exception. I cannot get sound of any kind on the XP system. Windows automatically installs a Creative Sound Blaster driver and confirms “this device is working properly” but it most certainly is not. It has never worked under XP.
Strangely when trying to install a later XP driver I get the message “Setup could not detect any Sound Blaster card on your system” yet how can this be since Windows ME is still happily playing perfect sound from the same computer!!
I am at a total loss and any advice will be very much appreciated.

 

[Riskyone101]

Hello and Welcome to TSF,

Have you checked device manager to see if the device is listed under
Sound, video, and controllers?
Any yellow ! marks or red X`s?

 

[jackory]

Everything in device manager is normal and as it should be. There are no yellow ! marks or red X`s. When exploring all options the system keeps telling me "this device is working properly". If only! Have been through the troubleshooting help system a few times but it has been unable to provide any inkling to solve the problem.
Have since discovered that Creative do provide the means to inform them of problems by email and am going to try this next. Even so this is such a weird problem that I don't feel at all confident that Creative will come up with anything.

 

[Riskyone101]

Go into control panel
sounds and audio devices
is it greyed out here? or can you make changes to it?

 

[Riskyone101]

Go into control panel
sounds and audio devices
is it greyed out here? or can you make changes to it?
What service pack are you running

 

[jackory]

In control panel (sounds and audio devices) nothing is greyed out and yes changes can be made. My original XP installation disc includes SP2. This recognises the soundcard and installs the driver for Creative SB Live! Value (WDM) and everything is (I believe) as it should be except that no sound exists. If I go into Control Panel | Sounds and Audio Devices Properties | Sounds | click Start Windows | the black > arrow when clicked immediately changes to a black square which only changes back to a black > arrow when clicked again (else it stays as a black square for ever). Needless to say there is no sound. Have tried upgrading to SP3, then uninstalling the soundcard driver, then rebooting but the problem remains the same. Have downloaded three possible Creative XP drivers but each annoyingly say that “Setup could not detect any Sound Blaster card on your system”. Uninstalling the WDM first made no difference whatsoever. Incidentally as Windows would always reinstall the WDM driver on reboot I had to remove the relevant INF files to circumvent this, but it made no difference as setup still did not detect any soundblaster card.
It has even been suggested to me that the soundcard may not have been correctly installed, but this cannot be so, as my setup is a dual boot system giving a choice of booting either Windows XP or ME. When booting ME the sound springs to life ringing out loud and true as it always has done. Something is wrong but what?
My thanks to the TSF tech team for your interest.

 

[Shaun_Daly]

I ended up throwing away my Creative Live! card after numerous instances of silence or alternatively screetching - Creative just cannot write decent reliable drivers for XP / Vista.

 

[Pauldo]

This reminds me of a system that I had that did similar things. It was with an onboard solution that used Creative drivers so it may not apply but I thought I would mention it anyways. I got a temperary fix by reinstalling chipset drivers, then reinstalling audio drivers (permenant fix was to ditch the Creative card :grin

Pauldo