Sound card installation problem

[EvilManagedCare]

Here's my system: LAN Party UT nF3 Gb (nForce 3 250 Gb chipset); 128 MB Geforce 6800, Athlon 64 3000+, 1024 MB RAM, Win XP Home w SP 2. All hardware has the latest drivers, Windows has the latest updates. I had some time ago stopped using the onboard sound, disabled it in BIOS, and installed an SB Live 5.1 I had. It worked just fine.

My wife lovingly bought me an Audigy 2 ZS for Christmas. I uninstalled the Creative software for the Live!, which automatically uninstalled the hardware profile in the device manager.

I stuck the Audigy 2 ZS in the next to last PCI slot. During installation the CD would autoplay, then a black screen that just seemed to be missing the window that opens detailing what's being installed, etc. The task bar was still visible. I would then get a message: Exception occured: error. Then I would have to CTRL ALT DEL to get the task manager to shut the program down. A reboot was never necessary. I tried switching the card to every available PCI slot, the same thing occured.

Then, I put the Live back in, which now wouldn't install either. The error message was as follows: "error occcured while launching the setup 0x080040801" The Live had worked just fine before. The Creative knowledge base was absolutely worthless. Any suggestions to get the Audigy working would be great. I don't think it's a bad card since now the Live is doing the same thing after working before. My suspicion is the uninstallation of the Creative software didn't get rid of everything and it'ss causing problems.

Now I'm back to using onboard sound. Yikes.

Thanks in advance.

 

[tiap]

Welcome to the world of Creative
Use a registry editor to find any and all instances of creative lurking and try to find all creative software still on drive and delete.
Then reinstall

 

[LED]

Try using Driver Cleaner as I think it works for Creative as well...

 

[EvilManagedCare]

Subject: Re: Sound card install problems

I just noticed something after uninstalling the card. Autoplay no longer works on my DVD drive. Also, you can explore a CD, but audio ones now don't play, and when I tried playing Doom 3, it wouldn't start. The drive would try and access the disc, but nothing would happen. This is new. When I tried to install the Audigy drivers earlier the same thing was occuring. Any ideas? It is a newer LiteOn DVD drive Model SOHW 832S. I uninstalled the Creative software, so I assume installing the Creative Disc Detector patch would be useless. I think somehow my DVD drive didn't like the uninstallation. I'm not sure, but I'm sure creative is responsible

 

[tiap]

Creative is almost as bad as AOL. Throws files absolutely everywhere.
You might try this to be easier. Uninstall as best you can. Pull out the creative cards. Use system restore to a much earlier time. Uninstall sblive software. Use a registry editor to clean traces. Install new ceative software install new card and let it pickup.
There have been cases where I've had to reinstall the os to get rid of creative lurks.

I know this isn't relative, but for your own satisfaction sometime, listen to a m-audio revolution 7.1 and look at the software it takes to make it run. You will be amazed and probably converted.

Good luck

 

[JimPhelpsMI]

Hi, Now you know why it's called PLUG AND PRAY!

 

[EvilManagedCare]

Actually I am starting to think the problem is in my DVD/CDRW drive. I tried playing an audio CD, which resulted in the latest Windows Media Player locking up. Nero's media player played about 11 seconds, then locked up. I would like some ideas for troubleshooting my drive. It's only a few months old, surely it's not already broken. Here's what I am going to try:

1. Buy a cleaner disk and compressed air to blow any dust out of the drive
2. Switch IDE cables
3. Set up as secondary drive on the HDD's cable with the latter as master
4. Put my old CDROM drive back in
5. Check for firmware updates at Lite On (stupid site is too slow and it times out)

Does anyone know why it would read some CD's (e.g. Far Cry and Civ 3), but not others (Doom 3 and the Creative install discs)?

What else can I do?

 

[EvilManagedCare]

For those of you on the edges of your seats, the problem was actually solvoed by looking at the IDE controller settings. The CD drive had been set back to PIO mode, not Ultra DMA. Upon checking the box to have the BIOS choose transfer rate the problem was solved. Hooray for me!