Hercules Fortissimo III causes PC Freeze on 1st sounds after install

[samajm]

Just ironed out some annoying motherboard issues and am now facing a final problem with my soundcard. The drivers install normally but at the first bit of audio of any kind the PC completely freezes. I can actually hear a blip of the sound to begin with before the lockup. PLEASE HELP! This is the last issue keeping my PC from running like a tank again.

Win XP w/SP2
AMD Athlon XP 2700+
RADEON 9700 PRO (Omega 2.5.97a)
DirectX 9.0c
Mach Speed V600DAP Mobo
Hercules Gamesurround Fortissimo III 7.1
Seagate 120GB ST3120026A IDE
1GB Rosewill PC3200 (2x512mb)
Thermaltake Purepower 420W

 

[Mem]

Try a different PCI slot,2nd make sure you use latest driver,third check onboard sound is disabled in BIOS.

Let us know if you still have problems.

 

[samajm]

oh yeah left out the important stuff, (i already typed this up once but the PC froze up just as I was finishing because of some windows sound grrr) I have tried every PCI slot, new and old drivers and the AC97 onboard sound is disabled.
Thank you.

 

[Mem]

Have you tried the sound card in a different PC to check it works fine,also is this with a clean install of OS,was there any previous onboard sound drivers/software installed,could be causing a conflict.