G
Guest
As some of you with older Sound Blaster cards have come to realise, Creative
has just deemed the Live! series at the end of its life cycle hence no more
support (not even for XP) and certainly no Vista drivers (granted, they said
there will be no Vista drivers for those a long time ago).
My understanding is that creative has also recently requested MSFT remove
the Live (WDM) generic driver from the Windows Update database. And I can
confirm that WinUpdate does not find an audio driver any more for these sound
cards.
I came across a method on a blog by a person calling themselves 'I'm mad as
hell'. The reason I'm posting their method here is not only because it works
flawlessly in Vista (32bit) but it also solved for me an issue I had with the
generic SB Live driver where I would lose all sound coming out of Sleep mode.
You'll need the XP SB Live driver exe called LiveDrvUni-Pack(ENG).exe and
although I can no longer find it at Creative's site, you can google it and
find it easily (it's a 23.3MB file) online.
Here are the steps in his/her own words - follow them to the letter:
1. Get LiveDrvUni-Pack(ENG).exe from Creative's web site
2. Run the installer, it will display the checking CRC window
3. It will then tell you it can't find an SB card - oh yeah? Leave the
dialog alone, we need it there for the moment
4. Owing to the magic way the installer works it has already unpacked all
the driver files onto your hard disk, as soon as the installer exits it will
delete them - so don't let that installer exit yet
5. Open an Explorer window, navigate to %USER%\AppData\Local\Temp and look
for the most recently created directory (mine was called CRF000. There will
be an Audio\Drivers directory under it, navigate to this directory. (BTW
substitute %USER% with your user name)
6. Copy the path from the path bar at the top of your Explorer window.
7. Now open the Device Manager (Windows key+Break), select the 'unknown
audio' device, right click and then select 'Update Driver Software' and then
'Browse my computer for software'.
8. Now paste the path to the driver into the text box and press next. The
driver should now install. That's it!
Hope this helps out anyone still using Creative's old(er) cards. It was a
blessing for me finding this (thanks to whomever wrote it).
has just deemed the Live! series at the end of its life cycle hence no more
support (not even for XP) and certainly no Vista drivers (granted, they said
there will be no Vista drivers for those a long time ago).
My understanding is that creative has also recently requested MSFT remove
the Live (WDM) generic driver from the Windows Update database. And I can
confirm that WinUpdate does not find an audio driver any more for these sound
cards.
I came across a method on a blog by a person calling themselves 'I'm mad as
hell'. The reason I'm posting their method here is not only because it works
flawlessly in Vista (32bit) but it also solved for me an issue I had with the
generic SB Live driver where I would lose all sound coming out of Sleep mode.
You'll need the XP SB Live driver exe called LiveDrvUni-Pack(ENG).exe and
although I can no longer find it at Creative's site, you can google it and
find it easily (it's a 23.3MB file) online.
Here are the steps in his/her own words - follow them to the letter:
1. Get LiveDrvUni-Pack(ENG).exe from Creative's web site
2. Run the installer, it will display the checking CRC window
3. It will then tell you it can't find an SB card - oh yeah? Leave the
dialog alone, we need it there for the moment
4. Owing to the magic way the installer works it has already unpacked all
the driver files onto your hard disk, as soon as the installer exits it will
delete them - so don't let that installer exit yet
5. Open an Explorer window, navigate to %USER%\AppData\Local\Temp and look
for the most recently created directory (mine was called CRF000. There will
be an Audio\Drivers directory under it, navigate to this directory. (BTW
substitute %USER% with your user name)
6. Copy the path from the path bar at the top of your Explorer window.
7. Now open the Device Manager (Windows key+Break), select the 'unknown
audio' device, right click and then select 'Update Driver Software' and then
'Browse my computer for software'.
8. Now paste the path to the driver into the text box and press next. The
driver should now install. That's it!
Hope this helps out anyone still using Creative's old(er) cards. It was a
blessing for me finding this (thanks to whomever wrote it).