Yet more X-FI and Vista problems

[RyuuKi]

EDIT:PROBLEM SOLVED

For anyone who was having problems with the sound of the Creative X-Fi Xtreme Gamer card not working after a reboot or if it causes a blue screen and physical memory dump (and subsequently a hard reboot) here is the solution that worked for me. Good luck!

1 - Use Device Manager in Vista control panel to uninstall the card itself and use the option to remove software too.

2 - Download and run Guru3D Driver Cleaner, choose both Creative items in the selection options and run it.

3 - Reboot

4 - Download the latest Creative X-FI driver and use WinRAR to extract the files to a folder. (right click the installer package you downloaded and click "Extract to folder" providing you have WinRAR installed).

5 - In the folder you extracted the driver package to, navigate to the Drivers folder and use the Setup.exe file there and check the option to overwrite any other software.

6 - Reboot

7 - Run the original driver package that you downloaded

8 - Reboot and enjoy your X-FI.


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Original Post


Hey all

It's been a long time since I posted on here, mainly because it's been a long time since I had any problems...until my recent upgrade and a whole flood of problems...but the one I haven't been able to solve, no matter how much web hunting I do is the problem with the Creative X-FI Xtreme Gamer and Vista 64bit.

I got the card, installed it, put the drivers on and all was good. then I rebooted and now my sound has gone. I can install the drivers again and they work, until I reboot! What in the hell is going on? Is it something I'm doing or something Vista is doing is it still down to Creative's incompetence to make cards that work? (I had a problem with X-Fi extreme gamer on my old PC build but figured i'd try it again...for some reason).

I'm dual booting Win XP 64bit and Vista Ultimate 64bit and the sound works fine on XP64 after every reboot. The main reason i'm dual booting is Microsofts inability to make things work on one OS. I have Vista 64 for Direct X 10 games, and XP64 for Photoshop and other graphics programs as Vista can't seem allow me to draw a line without pausing half way through.

If anyone can help me sort this out I would be very greatful as I've spent all week dealing with all matter of PC problems (not just my own either) and i'm close to just setting the damn thing on fire!

System is as follow:

Intel Core2Duo E6750 2.66ghz 1333fsb
Asus P5K-E wi/fi motherboard
BFG Geforce 8800GTX 768mb OC2 edition
4GB Geil DDR2 800mhz
500gb 16mb cache SATA II Western Digital HDD
320gb 16mb cache SATA II Western Digital HDD Backup
Creative X-FI Xtreme Gamer
Windows XP 64bit with all updates
Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit with all updates

Thanks in advance for any tips!

[SRTDodge05]

Are you using the latest creative x64 drivers?

[RyuuKi]

Yep

All drivers i'm using are the lastest up to date ones for the 64 bit OS

[SRTDodge05]

Mite have something to do with driver signing

[TQ]

Originally Posted by RyuuKi

Yep

All drivers i'm using are the latest up to date ones for the 64 bit OS

The 64-bit drivers posted October 1st?

[RyuuKi]

Yeah Oct 1st, Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi series Vista Driver 2.15.0003

I think i managed to fix the no sound on reboot problem. If anyone is having similar troubles do the following:

1- Uninstall any Creative drivers and software. Use the Device Manager to uninstall the card.

2- Download the latest drivers

3- Right click the driver package you downloaded and use WinRAR to extract it to a folder.

4- Navigate to the folder and enter the Drivers folder. Use the setup there with the option "overwrite shared creative drivers" (or something like that).

5- Once that's done, reboot and then run the main setup then reboot.

Should work, i've been testing it and it seems ok.


My new problem is that every so often I will get a blue screen doing a Physical Memory Dump which results in a complete system reboot.

Any ideas?

[TQ]

Originally Posted by RyuuKi

I'm dual booting Win XP 64bit and Vista Ultimate 64bit and the sound works fine on XP64 after every reboot.

So you're having problems with both XP64 and Vista64?

[RyuuKi]

Just Vista. No problems in XP

[TQ]

I'll assume you disabled the on-board audio, too...but at least you seemed to have fixed the problem.

[SRTDodge05]

Blue screen could be from the drivers.

[RyuuKi]

I'll try removing everything tomorrow and starting from scratch. I want to avoid formatting again as that would make 6 times over 2 days...

[RyuuKi]

Problem solved as far as i can tell! I managed to get the sound drivers to stay on after rebooting and stopped the blue screen physical memory dump.

Again, for anyone who has this problem the solution is as follows.

1 - Use Device Manager to uninstall the card itself and use the option to remove software too.

2 - Download and run Guru3D Driver Cleaner, choose both Creative items in the selection options and run it.

3 - Reboot

4 - Download the latest Creative X-FI driver and use WinRAR to extract the files to a folder. (right click the installer package you downloaded and click "Extract to folder" providing you have WinRAR installed).

5 - In the folder you extracted the driver package to, navigate to the Drivers folder and use the Setup.exe file there and check the option to overwrite any other software.

6 - Reboot

7 - Run the original driver package that you downloaded

8 - Reboot and enjoy your X-FI.

[jonson004]

Are you using the latest creative x64 drivers?

[RyuuKi]

Yeah as I said in my post.

It's worth mentioning though that the fix that i listed above worked for about a day. Now i have completely eliminated the problem entirely. I sent the X-FI card back and got a complete refund. Screw Creative and there Xtremely Faulty-Item, their customer support is probably the worst I have ever contacted and with vast amount of time that the X-FI has been available now you would have thought they would make drivers that work.

[ATINUT]

I'm not surprised by this. You should see the complaints about the X-Fi and Vista on the Creative forums.

I ended up taking out my Audigy 2ZS and put my HT OMEGA CLARO, which has working Vista 64 drivers, back in, because those blockheads at Creative have abandoned Audigy 2 users, ie no graphic equalizer and so on.