Sound just died

[Traxan]

My sound has suddenly disappeared. According to Windows 7, the card is there. the Device Manager see the SB X-Fi card and reports it is working properly.

But if I try to reinstall the drivers, I get an error saying setup cannot detect a device in my system. The Sound icon in the systray says SPDIF Out, which is not the output for the X-Fi.

I removed the card and reseated it. No dice. i can't install drivers, because the card is not detected. Did this card just die on me?

 

[master_shake_]

what if you remove the drivers completely, have you tried that?

 

[Traxan]

Not yet. But it got stranger. Restarting the system would shoot memory use to 100% and then down to the 90s for several minutes and this is a 16GB system. but I'd open the performance monitor and no app was consuming that kind of memory. Eventually it would drop down to normal utilization, about 16%.

I switched on the motherboard audio and switched the speakers to that. No memory problems and the sound works perfectly. So I'm wondering if the card did indeed die -- it's about 3 years old, and was farking up memory on start up.

The sound qualify of the onboard audio card is nowhere near as good, btw.

 

[nerp]

Does sound like the card died. It's remarkable how the soundcard industry has collapsed. There are still cards on the market, though. Nothing worse than crud onboard audio.

 

[Traxan]

Amazing. I never had a sound card die.