Vista Upgrade Dual Boot Breaks Sound

[Paul E. Keister]

I have a machine with 2 hard drives: one for XP Pro and the other for Vista
Home Premium. The XP side was working perfectly fine until I installed
Vista on the second drive. AFter installation I found my SoundBlaster
AUdigy no longer functioned so I downloaded Creative's latest XP driver. It
won't even install and fails (multiple times) with SPI errors, which I sent
on to Microsoft. This is a real bummer. The idea behind the dual boot was
to allow the various vendors time to get their Vista act together. Now I
find that this "upgrade" really broke the original system.

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

Installing Vista wouldn't break a sound card, nor would it alter anything in
the XP system. Either the sound will work or it won't with the supplied
drivers, but it wouldn't physically damage the card nor would it disable it
from working under XP. While it seems improbably that the card suddenly
failed, I would run through standard sound card troubleshooting steps in XP
here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307918

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com

 

[...winston]

You should use different drivers for the Creative Audigy 2 for XP and Vista.
The Vista driver is not for XP.

Vista didn't impact the sound, more than likely the driver didn't install properly.
The Creative Audigy driver is tempermental. Temporarily disable your AV, firewall and disconnect from the net before attempting the install.

I've followed the process detailed below on a few XP and Vista machines without issue.

Note:
The latest XP driver is 02.09.0016
The most recent available for Vista is 2.12.0002

For XP Audigy 2 or 4
Uninstall the driver via Control Panel/Add Remove
Restart
Disable AV, firewall, interent connection
Reinstall the 2.09.0016 driver by double clicking the exe file and follow the instructions.
Restart.
If using the other Creative Tools you should also reinstall the latest Media Player Organizer and the DVD-Audio Player.
Note: Ignore if Audigy LS or SE.

For Vista:
Uninstall the driver via Device Manager(Sound Video and Game Controllers option), right click SB Audigy, select uninstall, confirm, select delete driver(important to avoid reinstallation issues).
Repeat for the Game Controller if present in Vista
Restart your pc
Delete the Creative folder
Disable AV, firewall, interent connection
Double click the 2.12.0002 file to reinstall the driver in Vista and follow the instructions..wait till it finishes it takes a few minutes to setup in Vista. Restart the machine when done. The application configuration console will reside on your start menu not in Control Panel.

...winston


:I have a machine with 2 hard drives: one for XP Pro and the other for Vista
: Home Premium. The XP side was working perfectly fine until I installed
: Vista on the second drive. AFter installation I found my SoundBlaster
: AUdigy no longer functioned so I downloaded Creative's latest XP driver. It
: won't even install and fails (multiple times) with SPI errors, which I sent
: on to Microsoft. This is a real bummer. The idea behind the dual boot was
: to allow the various vendors time to get their Vista act together. Now I
: find that this "upgrade" really broke the original system.
:
: