Creative X-Fi Card problems in Vista x64

[Paul]

Hey,
Recently I tried installing a Creative X-Fi card and all seemed to go
well. However, while the card seemed to work after installing the latest
drivers provided by Creative (not the beta ones) after a reboot caused
by some of the other Creative utilities (the OpenAL driver in
particular) the sound card was no longer recognised by Vista. It
realised there was new hardware present(strangely referring to the card
as a PCI device rather than a Multimedia device as it had when I first
plugged it in) but it didn't detect any drivers. Uninstalling the card
and then re-installing the drivers did not resolve the issue. So I
uninstalled all the Creative apps from my PC, then physically removed
the card from my computer and rebooted. I then tried re-installing
everything again, but now the Creative installers tell me that there is
no compatible hardware present...anyone have any ideas?

On a side note I have removed the card since then but Vista keeps
pestering me about a new PCI device that's been detected, even though
there is nothing new plugged in, and telling it to never remind me about
the device doesn't work, and neither does uninstalling the device in the
Device Manager. Dies anyone have any ideas about how to stop this?

Thanks for any help,
Paul

 

[Guest]

Hi Paul, What version of Vista are you running ( ie 32 bit or 64 bit) ?

 

[Dave Angel]

Yeah I've noticed this "disturbing vista behaviour" with my creative
soundblaster audigy2 soundcard.
Every now and then maybe once every couple of weeks I will turn on the
computer and it will say it found a new pci device and that my soundcard is
missing even though it was working fine for the month before!
At first I did what you tried uninstall/intall and that seemed to fix it
after many reboots.
And the fact that the midi port on my old sb audigy2 isn't supported by
Vista doesn't help any. Anways now when it happens I just turn off my
machine for a bit and then turn it back on and the soundcard will
"magically" reappear as though nothing was ever wrong so it's either time
for me to get a new soundcard since this one is dying or creative need to
fix their drivers or vista is just being flaky!
Needless to say I haven't upgraded to a X-Fi card since I"ve heard to many
horror stories and if my card does die I guess I'll just switch to using the
onboard audio which won't make much of a difference for me since I don't get
EAX in my games under Vista now anyways since Creative want's you to shell
out $10 for it!

 

[Paul]

Hey,
I'm running Vista Home Premium x64 edition.

Hi Paul, What version of Vista are you running ( ie 32 bit or 64 bit) ?

 

[Guest]

Hi Paul, I'm running Business 64 bit and using a Fatality Card and I haven't
had any trouble with it whatsoever. The thing that does annoy me is the fact
that you can't use all the features that come with the 32 bit on a 64 bit
system.

As far as your mystery PCI device I was reading an article the other day
saying that your problem can happen if you have an SLI slot ( empty that is )
Maybe you can go into Control Panel/System and if that PCI slot shows up with
a device you might be able to get it to ignore it ( just a thought )

regards