X-fi driver update issue causing stuttering

[niggles]

I only picked up my X-fi 4 days ago and loved it. I ran Quake 4 and went to tweak the sound settings and found an "Open AL" setting. figuring that this could do wonders I tried to enable it but Quake advised that I had to download the latest sound card drivers. I hit the creatvie labs web site and grabbed the latest driver which said it was updated Aug 21. The driver that the card shipped with said it was updated from Aug 8. I dowloaded it, installed it, and then tried to run Quake 4... it crapped out. Also F.E.A.R. is now crapping out, and so is BF2. When I say crapping out I mean it's stuttering anytime anything either graphically or audio wise occurs in the way of an effect. I should also mention that I turned off the open AL option in Q4 immediatly and it was not an option in any other game. None of these issues were happening until after I updated the driver to what appeared to be newer driver. I'm goint to unload the later driver which actually appeared to be exactly the same as the one it shipped with. But I don't hold out much hope because it *does* seem to be the same driver. Anyone have any ideas on either how to fix this.