Sudden Loss of Sound

[paximus]

Was wondering is anyone else is experiencing a sudden loss of sound issue in
Vista x64?
This occurred on my PC pre and post SP1. I've come across some scattered
posts across various forums with a few ppl having the same issue and we
can't seem to nail if its a Vista fault, Soundcard+driver fault or
Chipset+driver fault.

The problem:-
Watching Vids or playing music (WM Player).
After stopping the Vid/Music or closing the App (WM player or winamp etc)
can randomly cause sound to get heavily distorted or simply stop altogether.
No drivers crash and NO system/application events are ever produced.
Affected users have semi success stopping and starting the Windows Audio
Service but the best workaround is a full reboot until it randomly occurs
again.

Frequency can be 5 mins after a reboot or 5 hours making it very difficult
to diagnose.

The soundcard in question is a Soundblaster X-Fi extreme gamer and the
motherboard chipset is a VIA K8T890 North / VT82521 South (although other
affected users differ slightly)

All drivers are latest and I have tested previous versions of
sound/mainboard drivers but no coconut !

Your thoughts please ...

 

[On the Bridge!]

vistas sound layer is very strange.... flaky unstable and non compatible
with older programs too.

I dont know how they managed to screw it up so bad...

What I do know is that Musicians are avoiding Vista because
its full of problems and they cant use their expensive hardware (for example
usb midi controlers)
or expensive software with it.

MS changed the sound layer probably to support better games... thats what i
read anyway.

 

[paximus]

I don't see why removing DirectSound3D's direct path to HAL a while keeping
OpenAL intact makes any sense I agree.
Anyway...looks like the kind of help I require isn't going to be found here
so I'll just have to keep an eye on those other boards.

 

[Mirek]

I don't see why removing DirectSound3D's direct path to HAL a while
keeping OpenAL intact makes any sense I agree.
Anyway...looks like the kind of help I require isn't going to be found
here so I'll just have to keep an eye on those other boards.

Check the chipset if its hot, could be a overheating problem, my card
has a heatsink.X-Fi cards had problem working on system with more than 3GB of system
memory, but Creative fix drivers and its working fine now.
I using X-Fi ExtremeAudio on 64-bit Vista with 6 GB and Intel P35
chipset (I also used this card on Nvidia nForce4 SLI chipset, but the
additional SilliconImage "RAID" has to be turned off in order to make it
work).
Everything is working fine.
Remove drivers, shut down your PC, and move card to different PCI slot
or PCIe(if your card is PCIe), start your pc and install drivers.
Turn off your on board audio in BIOS, and RAID, etc. It could be your
chipset fault but as far I know lot of people complained on nForce problem.Its sucks but the X-Fi series has a lot of problems.