I build my own PC's and have never had issues until yesterday. I know this isnt a computer hardware forum but I figured I'd give it a shot and see if someone here can help me troubleshoot this dang thing. Specs: CPU: AMD 64 3200+ Memory: 2 gb DDR PC 3200 Mobo: ECS nforce-A939 Vid Card: EVGA 8200 GS Sound Card: Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio OS: Windows XP SP2 Ok so I built this machine from a used motherboard a friend gave me. I got all the hardware installed and spent Christmas Eve installing Windows and music playing programs. I am building this machine for use as a dj pc for my parties, and to have a computer in the living room. I spent the evening 'playing' with different audio programs and moving mp3's to the the machine from my two other pcs in the house. I woke up Christmas morning and noticed an update for Windows XP to SP3. So naturally I decided to upgrade the OS. After a few hours the install was done and I rebooted. After the reboot the pc made ABSOLUTELY no sound at all. Figuring it was a problem with SP3 I downgraded back to SP2 which took an hour or so. That didnt work either. I loaded up a dj program called 'DSS DJ' and selected my Soundblaster card for output and the program refused to eve load tracks onto the decks, let alone play them. When I switched it over the onboard 'realtek' driver it played, but no sound was being output. I assumed perhaps the speakers were bad so I grabbed my headphones and tried... nope no sound. I tried to use realtek's 'jack sensing' thinking perhaps it wasnt configured right.. still nothing. I shut down the machine and moved the X-fi card to the main pc, booted up and installed the drivers and viola had a perfect sound coming out. So now I figured maybe something was wrong with the registry or the drivers on the other machine. I tried a roll back on both drivers... nope same problem. I tried uninstalling both drivers, rebooting and reinstalling, rebooting and still no sound. I even purchased a program called 'Driver Genius' which told me my realtek driver was out of date and upgraded it... still nothing. I finally resorted to formatting and reinstalling windows on the new box, booted up and installed the drivers but still... I have the same problem. Now I assumed that perhaps the onboard sound was dead and maybe the PCI slot I was sliding the X-Fi card into was bad. So I test it... I put the NIC card into the PCI slot where the soundcard had been going and figured it wouldnt work... I was wrong. I really dont think it could be hardware since the whole thing worked beautfully until I upgraded to SP3. Anyone have something that might help? I am completely and utterly stumped.
Have you try update your X-Fi drivers via creative? I am using the same X-fi model, and XP SP3. Eventhough the onboard realtek works, but I prefered it to be disable via Bios. Might have a try on that for you. If you want, I can help out troubleshoot with you via MSN.
I was thinking that somehow it was disabled via BIOS and that was my whole problem, but I dont see it anywhere.... ill pm u my MSN.
I finally have the X-Fi soundcard working. I went into bios and shut off the onboard audio and booted up to see the card working... weird.
Glad that you finally get the hang of it. Actually, there are some board which still support the IRQ reserved, you might want to check if your board bios still have it. This way, you might be able to use both sound card at the same time like i do. While listen to music via speaker in one sound card, the other voice chatting using another onboard sound card.