Soundcard

[Travis King]

I hope this doesn't sound too general or too much like a rant. After I
explain what's going on, I'll get to the question. I have a Creative Audigy
on Vista Home Premium and the drivers for it are terrible because for
starters, Windows Media Player keeps getting stuck on 'media changing' and
mfpmp crashes, which I believe is due to a bad driver. The music on
occasion also stutters and I don't get full 5.1 sound anyway even when it's
set to 5.1. I already have the audio enhancements disabled, which seemed to
improve things but it did not fix the problem.
Also, when anytime after I resume my computer from sleep, the computer
has major problems shutting down any time after that, (It will shut down,
but it sits there and idles for about three minutes before it will begin to
shut down) and I checked on the slow shut down issue, and my computer
reported that my sound card is causing the slow shut downs. I am getting
fed up with Creative because they're very slow about getting new drivers
out, and they never are any better than the previous ones. Okay, so here's
the question. Is there a good soundcard out there that works well with
Vista and has at least the same abilities the Audigy does, as well as the
same sound quality? Thanks.

System Specs (Windows Experience Index: 4.0):
AMD Sempron 64 (Socket 754) OC'd to 2GHz (4.0)
1.5GB PC-2700 RAM (Thanks to the slower 512MB module) (4.3)
Ati Radeon X1600PRO AGP8x with 256MB GDDR2 video RAM (4.4 & 4.8)
WD 120GB 7200RPM IDE 8MB cache HD (5.0)
WD 80GB 7200RPM IDE 2MB cache HD (slave)

 

[dev]

/Travis King/ said:

I hope this doesn't sound too general or too much like a rant. After I
explain what's going on, I'll get to the question. I have a Creative Audigy
on Vista Home Premium and the drivers for it are terrible because for
starters, Windows Media Player keeps getting stuck on 'media changing' and
mfpmp crashes, which I believe is due to a bad driver. The music on
occasion also stutters and I don't get full 5.1 sound anyway even when it's
set to 5.1. I already have the audio enhancements disabled, which seemed to
improve things but it did not fix the problem.
Also, when anytime after I resume my computer from sleep, the computer
has major problems shutting down any time after that, (It will shut down,
but it sits there and idles for about three minutes before it will begin to
shut down) and I checked on the slow shut down issue, and my computer
reported that my sound card is causing the slow shut downs. I am getting
fed up with Creative because they're very slow about getting new drivers
out, and they never are any better than the previous ones. Okay, so here's
the question. Is there a good soundcard out there that works well with
Vista and has at least the same abilities the Audigy does, as well as the
same sound quality? Thanks.

System Specs (Windows Experience Index: 4.0):
AMD Sempron 64 (Socket 754) OC'd to 2GHz (4.0)
1.5GB PC-2700 RAM (Thanks to the slower 512MB module) (4.3)
Ati Radeon X1600PRO AGP8x with 256MB GDDR2 video RAM (4.4 & 4.8)
WD 120GB 7200RPM IDE 8MB cache HD (5.0)
WD 80GB 7200RPM IDE 2MB cache HD (slave)

Audigy 4 works fine here, but not the software bundled with it. Perhaps
a fulfillment disk will eventually be released, as hinted by Creative.

As to the slow shutdown issue, try this...

START button|RUN
Type "msconfig" (no quotes) <enter>
Click "continue" if presented with a prompt
Click the Start Up tab

UNcheck both these items...

CTHelper Application
CTXFiHlp Application

Click on OK, then answer YES (for a reboot).

When the machine comes back up, it may prompt that a program was blocked.
Click that icon, in the Tray (at bottom-right of screen) and RUN the
blocked SYSTEM CONFIGURATION application.
When the prompt appears indicating that the configuration has changed,
tic the "don't show me this again" box.
Click on OK.

 

[Travis King]

Sure enough, that appears to have fixed the shut down part of the problem.
Thanks.