My ZS is gone!

[ryansebiz]

My ZS has disappeared.

It was working fine yesterday. I tried to play some music in Winamp today and got an error.

I went to Sounds and Audio Devices and, under the Volume tab, it says "No Audio Device."

The Audio tab says "No Playback Devices."

I went to creative.com and downloaded the latest driver (released January 06). I uninstalled all my Creative software and drivers and ran the new driver. After a restart the ZS is still gone.

Device Manager shows a yellow exclamation point next to "Multimedia Controller." I selected updated driver and got "Cannot Install this Hardware" because it "cannot find the necessary software." The only Creative device listed is Creative Game Port.

How do I get XP to recognize my ZS?

 

[Arcanedeath]

Uninstall all the creative software, reboot in safe mode and use driver cleaner to make sure its all gone, reboot again reseat your ZS in its PCI slot and the reinstall everything and see if that works, if not try these same steps again except in a different PCI slot.

 

[Goi]

I don't think you need to do the driver uninstallation. Just try reseating the soundcard. I thought my ZS was gone too and was even using the onboard sound for some time, then I reseated it a few times and found out that it actually worked.

 

[ryansebiz]

Originally posted by: Goi
I don't think you need to do the driver uninstallation. Just try reseating the soundcard. I thought my ZS was gone too and was even using the onboard sound for some time, then I reseated it a few times and found out that it actually worked.

I reseated it and reinstalled and it's still gone.

Should I reseat it back to the previous slot?

 

[ayabe]

Originally posted by: ryansebiz

Originally posted by: Goi
I don't think you need to do the driver uninstallation. Just try reseating the soundcard. I thought my ZS was gone too and was even using the onboard sound for some time, then I reseated it a few times and found out that it actually worked.

I reseated it and reinstalled and it's still gone.

Should I reseat it back to the previous slot?

If you are sure it's seated properly and have tried multiple slots and you get absolutely nothing(doulbe check Device Manager and ensure there are no Unknown Devices) then your card is deceased.

 

[Goi]

Perhaps not entirely deceased. Maybe just a bad PCB trace or something. Check the PCI interface and see if anything's weird. In any case, it's gonna be hard to fix it on your own.

 

[SparkyJJO]

My brother's Audigy 2 did that once a couple years ago. He messed with it for awhile and all of a sudden it came back and has been fine since.

I think the cards are just tempermental sometimes, maybe it hates Thursdays.