Sound Blaster Live Locking My Machine

[OzMan]

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to keep my SB Live from locking my machine. I have heard and read many good things about this card, and I have had nothing but trouble.

Done everything I can think of doing. Different slots, upgrade to Windows ME, new drivers.

What's happening now is when the machine boots and goes to plug and play the sound card, it goes to blue screen when it tries to install the SB16 Emulator. There was one time I was able to cancel the P&P install and all seemed well for about 3 minutes, until the the machine just hung on me. That was the big problem in Win98SE as well.

Hardware profile:
Abit KT7 - AMD TB800 Athalon - SB Live - NVidia TNT2 Pro - Maxtor 30GB - Window ME - Netgear FA311 NIC

Should I try a different manufacturers card (thinking about Turtle Beach Santa Cruz), or could I have a bad SB Live card on my hands?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks,

The Man of Oz

:disgust:

 

[beer]

Hmmm...
Have you tried just flat out disabling SB16 emulation? I mean just X that f*ucker out in the device manager.

Also, make sure you REM out the Soundblaster lines in the autoexec.bat after you do this or you will get a real-mode driver error when the driver loads but can't find the sb16 emulation.

 

[AnimeKnight]

Everytime I format my harddrive i get this problem... i usually go into the safe mode to disable the sb16 emulator... except last time i couldn't even disable it at safe mode cuz it never installed into my system.. it always hangs when it is about to be installed.. you can called the sb customer service.. they will walk you thru a procedule to preinstall the sb16 emulator which won't cause hte system to hang.. that's what i did

 

[StanTheMan]

If your motherboard uses via chipset, then do this:
1. clean install windows with video card only
2. After that instal via 4 in 1 driver
3. re-boot, instal driver for video card
4. After that works ok, then install the other devices as usual.

 

[mcbiff]

Are you sure you have the newest drivers?

 

[OzMan]

I have previously been able to disable the SB 16, and the system would boot fine, then hang after a while. I have already gone the route of doing a fresh reinstall with video first, the 4in1 Via Patch, then other cards.

The only thing I haven't done is call Creative yet. Maybe that will help.

 

[OzMan]

As far as the latest drivers being installed. Got em right from the Creative web site, downloaded yesterday.

Really at a loss here.

NOT GIVING UP THOUGH!!!! Onward Troops!

OzMan

 

[rockhard]

What PCI slot u got the Live & the NIC in?
What IRQ is it showing up as in Windows Hardware Device Manager (Live & SB16)?
What IRQ is the NIC?


rockhard =)

 

[OzMan]

IRQ 0 System timer OK
IRQ 1 Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural Keyboard OK
IRQ 2 Programmable interrupt controller OK
IRQ 3 Communications Port (COM2) OK
IRQ 4 Communications Port (COM1) OK
IRQ 5 VIA Tech 3038 PCI to USB Universal Host Controller OK
IRQ 5 VIA Tech 3038 PCI to USB Universal Host Controller OK
IRQ 5 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering OK
IRQ 6 Standard Floppy Disk Controller OK
IRQ 7 Printer Port (LPT1) OK
IRQ 8 System CMOS/real time clock OK
IRQ 9 SCI IRQ used by ACPI bus OK
IRQ 10 NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 (English) OK
IRQ 10 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering OK
IRQ 11 NETGEAR FA311 Fast Ethernet PCI Adapter OK
IRQ 11 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering OK
IRQ 12 PS/2 Compatible Mouse Port OK
IRQ 13 Numeric data processor OK
IRQ 14 VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller OK
IRQ 14 Primary IDE controller (dual fifo) OK
IRQ 15 VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller OK
IRQ 15 Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo) OK

Hope this is not too much overload. Currently the NIC is in slot 2. I have tried the sound card in every other slot with the same result. In WIN98SE, the card had an IRQ of 11 most of the time. The last time I had it booted and working for a few minutes (in ME), it took IRQ 5.

Also, with the sound card out, the system is much more stable, but still not 100%. It hung just a little while ago with the configuration you see above.

UGGHHHHH!

OzMan

 

[rockhard]

Flash your bios to the latest.

Take out all your cards except for the Video card and go into your bios and switch pnp OS to enabled.
Boot up with just vid card and if u havent installed the latest 4in1's do so now.
If u install 4in1's, reboot when prompted, shutdown.
Put your sound card in next into PCI SLOT 4.
Reboot and install latest drivers. (No Liveware - its buggy as hell!)
Reboot when prompted.
Shutdown and install your NIC into PCI SLOT 2.
This should take an IRQ of say 9 or 11.

You should be aiming for the SBLive being on say IRQ 10 and the SB16 Emulation being on a lower IRQ - 5 be nice

Try this and let me know how you get on,

rockhard =)

 

[Grminalac]

Yes I have seen that many people have been experiencing difficulty with the SB Live series of soundcards. I personally have had a good deal of trouble myself. When i first installed, the same thing happened to me it autodetected and wham i got a facefull of blue screen, which I later discovered were caused by a older version of LiveWare 3.0, nice of them to tell me my Liveware 3.0 wasn't the same as their Liveware 3.0 (why don't they call theirs 3.1 or something) I had to download the latest version from creative. Secondly I also experienced problems with the SB16 emulation, I had to goto the system properties screen and disable the emulation. If I were to do it again i would not have purchased this product. Everything now seems fine except fot the occasional annoying crack and pop I see in games like DiabloII, although the pops and cracks drive me nuts, consequently I also tried installing a card in my brothers old quantex PII-400, unfortunetly I still heard cracks and pops in the games.
I definetly suggest downloading new core drivers from creative... do not let the machine autodetect the card, cancel it and then immediately install the new drivers.
As for me i'm currently looking into a turtle beach card or a aureal card.

 

[rockhard]

If ur looking for a replacement this card below is getting better reviews than the Live in some magazines?

VideoLogic Sonic Fury
Specs: PCI sound card, 20-bit playback resolution, 18-bit/48kHz recording, full duplex, 8Mb DLS-compatible wavetable synthesizer, line in, mic in, front/rear line outs, versa-jack, MIDI. Internal connections: CD, TAD, aux, S/PDIF in, mic/headphone, daughterboard. Compatibility: EAX 2, A3D 1, I3DL2, DirectSound 3D, Sensaura MacroFX and MultiDrive, MPU-401. Software: Yamaha S-YXG20 and S-YXG50 soft synthesizers and XG Studio (full versions), Sonic Foundry ACID XPress (VideoLogic version), Orion Making Waves Lite (OEM version), COWON Jet-Audio, MusicMatch Jukebox 5.1, Techland FutureBeat 3D, Voyetra Digital Orchestrator (full version) and AudioStation 4 (OEM version). Drivers for Windows 95, 98, NT 4 and 2000 supplied.

If anyone knows anything about this card, please share your knowledge with us

rockhard =)

 

[The Wildcard]

Man, speaking of sblive problems, when i first installed it after a reinstall of my OS, it kept crashing and i couldn't figure out why. In fact, it wouldn't even boot into windows....just kept saying
" Windows Prtection Error " and then it would shut itself down.

Then i figured out why. Apparently, Soundblaster, when you install part of their liveware progs, changes your startup sound to that LIGHTNING crap and so i disabled that startup sound in the control panel and after i rebooted, it would crash because of that...can you believe that?

And that sb16 emulation has given me plenty of trouble too.

 

[gyroscope]

The VideoLogic Sonic Fury = Turtle Beach Santa Cruz .. Video Logic is just the european name, or at least thats what i've heard.

i bought a santa cruz after my sblive x-gamer started locking up all the time while playing games that use eax. i counted it once and it locked up 17 times in 5 hours while playing deus ex. so now ive got a3d, eax, and ~0% cpu usage while playing mp3s thanks to the built in mp3 decoding thing that the santa cruz has. i'd probably never buy a creative labs soundcard again after using the santa cruz. especially since they never release anything new anyway. sblive, sblive value, sblive x-gamer, sblive mp3, sblive platnium.. new name same thing.

 

[rockhard]

gyroscope

That videologic sound card sure sounds sweet when u look at the specs
Would you say that it is just as good as a live?
Have u had any issues with its drivers or game compatibility?
Its £68.00 here in the UK so looks an ideal alternative to the Live.

I now have my Live running sweet in Win2K since i solved my irq conflict probs the Live poses. It seems that the IRQ conflict problems is the main cause of everyones Live problems
Does ur Turtle Beach suffer the same IRQ probs?

rockhard =)