Problems with Creative SB Live! soundcard and XP

Murgatroyd

I've been given a Creative Sound Blaster Live! 1024 soundcard. It's fairly old, but still a lot better than the onboard sound that I've been using. Annoyingly, I'm having problems getting it to work with Windows XP.

I've installed the drivers from the CD that came with the card, device manager says that 'the device is working properly', but I get no sound at all.

I downloaded some updated XP drivers from the Creative website, but when I try to install them I get this message:



This is a little confusing, as the system seems to think there is a sound card there.

I've checked my audio settings and they all seem to be okay, I've turned off the onboard sound in the BIOS, checked for resource conflicts, uninstalled, reinstalled, done pretty much everything I can think of, and now I'm at a bit of a loss.

I've got an old HD with Windows ME installed, and when I tried the card with that it worked fine, so it must be an XP specific problem.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated. TIA.

gaming_guy

have you tried reseating the card?

you could have a look here on the creative labs forum

Murgatroyd

gaming_guy wrote:

have you tried reseating the card?

you could have a look here on the creative labs forum

Thanks for pointing me towards the Creative forums, I'll post there. And excuse my ignorance, but what difference would reseating the card make?

moob_2

Perhaps the reason it isn't detected is because it is not properly in place on the motherboard.

sco0ter

Try this link


http://uk.europe.creative.com/support/downloads/softwareupdate.asp?nSUFlag=1&sDestUrl=http://uk.europe.creative.com/support/downloads/&hdAllProduct=1&LangID=1033&hdDspLangID=1033&OCXType=

Its creatives autodetect software and will detect any attached hardware and give you a list of compatible drivers/software

murk11

Just a thought, make sure the onboard sound is disabled, before you try installing any software for the new card

blinky

The hardware detection in driver installer sometimes blocks the updates being installed on OEM Creative cards. They give the OEM and retail models different hardware ID's...

Details of the workaround will be in the Creative forums.

Murgatroyd

Thanks for all the replies.

moob wrote:

Perhaps the reason it isn't detected is because it is not properly in place on the motherboard.

As I said in the original post, the card works okay with Windows ME (different HD, everything else the same), so this isn't the problem.

murk11 wrote:

Just a thought, make sure the onboard sound is disabled, before you try installing any software for the new card

Again, as I said previously, onboard sound is disabled in the BIOS, so it's unlikely to be this.


sco0ter and blinky: thanks, I'll look into both of these

Mark_LJ

Creative drivers are not the best in the world. I'd be inclined to remove ALL the Creative drivers and restart the machine. Let windows install its own generic Creative soundcard drivers when it restarts - don't leave the Creative CD in or it will install those ones. I did this with a similar card in an old machine for the kids and it works fine.

Secondly, (sorry if you've already done this) have you checked the "Sound and Audio devices" in control panel - click the 'audio' tab and see if the SB card is the default audio device and its not set to mute.