Enigmatic Sound Blaster driver problem

[Guest]

Hello All..

My SoundBlaster Live X-Gamer card has stopped working after I installed drivers for an old digital camera. I believe I accidentally overwrote shared files for the soundcard, but I can't get them back; Every time I try to un-install the soundcard driver, the device list locks up, and won't close. When I restart the computer, the device is still there.

I used Creative Labs' own uninstaller, and it worked, but it would not re-install the driver. I have removed the soundcard and restarted to save the registry's state with the soundcard out, and when i put it back in, windows automatically loads the corrupt version of the driver again. When I manually update the driver, it locks up and refuses to complete, right after it copies the last file.

I suppose I need to find a way to uninstall AND DELETE the corrupt driver, so I can start fresh without any overwritten files. Please tell me someone has an idea?

 

[Edward W. Thompson]

Have you tried System Restore followed by reinstalling the original drivers.

Hello All..

My SoundBlaster Live X-Gamer card has stopped working after I installed

drivers for an old digital camera. I believe I accidentally overwrote shared
files for the soundcard, but I can't get them back; Every time I try to
un-install the soundcard driver, the device list locks up, and won't close.
When I restart the computer, the device is still there.

I used Creative Labs' own uninstaller, and it worked, but it would not

re-install the driver. I have removed the soundcard and restarted to save
the registry's state with the soundcard out, and when i put it back in,
windows automatically loads the corrupt version of the driver again. When I
manually update the driver, it locks up and refuses to complete, right after
it copies the last file.

I suppose I need to find a way to uninstall AND DELETE the corrupt driver,

so I can start fresh without any overwritten files. Please tell me someone
has an idea?

 

[Guest]

Yeah, but system restore didn't do me any good, except roll back my video driver. The sound blaster still seemed to be trying to use corrupted drivers. I did get it all back in working order though...

I went in the device properties for the soundblaster, and in driver details or something, found the names of all the files that make up the sound blaster driver. I deleted every one of them, through the dos console, and next thing I knew, it worked again. However, that would mean it had a good copy sitting on ice somewhere other than the one it told me about, and it installed it automatically, because I didn't even re-install the driver before it started working again. All I did was manually delete the files for the broken one in System32.

 

[Yves Leclerc]

XP "caches" most of the drivers.

Yeah, but system restore didn't do me any good, except roll back my video

driver. The sound blaster still seemed to be trying to use corrupted
drivers. I did get it all back in working order though...

I went in the device properties for the soundblaster, and in driver

details or something, found the names of all the files that make up the
sound blaster driver. I deleted every one of them, through the dos console,
and next thing I knew, it worked again. However, that would mean it had a
good copy sitting on ice somewhere other than the one it told me about, and
it installed it automatically, because I didn't even re-install the driver
before it started working again. All I did was manually delete the files for
the broken one in System32.

 

[Nathan McNulty]

Yes it does (C:\Windows\Driver Cache\ usually).

Have you tried uninstalling the drivers in Safe Mode, then installing
the new drivers off Creative's website in Safe Mode, then turn off the
computer, install the card, then turn it on, and see if the new drivers
grab and overwrite the old ones?