Is my SoundBlaster Kaput?

Since yesterday, I’ve been having some audio troubles. Whenever I start up my computer, Windows tells me that it’s found new hardware and insists that I install drivers. I’ve tried using the CD that came with the card, and I’ve tried downloading the lastest drivers for the card, but it never works, and the new hardware wizard comes up at every windows boot up.

I’ve also noticed that when I try to play music in Winamp, I get the following error: “Bad DirectSound Driver. Please install proper drivers or select another device in configuration. Error code: 88780078”

I’m running Windows XP Home SP1. The sound card is a Creative SoundBlaster Live! X-Gamer. Are there any suggestions?

While I’m at it I’ll explain what happened before the audio trouble. For a friend with an older computer, I removed my harddrives, and placed his in my comp and installed an older version of windows for him (his CDROM wasn’t working). When I was done, I put my own harddrives back, booted up and behold: New hardware found. :slight_smile: :smack:

I’m taking a wild guess here, but have you checked your CMOS settings to see if they’ve changed? I’m referring to the configuration settings that pertain to PCI bus mapping and plug-and-play operating systems. You can try setting the CMOS to dynamically map new PCI devices and make certain that it knows you are running a plug-and-play operating system on your PC.

Another thing you might try is completely removing the audio card from your hardware settings, powering off your PC, and physically removing the card from the computer. Power up your computer and make sure that it boots properly. Power it off again and reinstall the card in the computer and power it up again. (You might consider installing the card in another slot, just in case.) Reinstall the drivers fro your installation CD rather than using the existing drivers and see if this helps.

BTW: wouldn’t it have been a bit better to loan your friend your CD-ROM drive in order to reinstall Windows on his own PC? Unless you’re running the exact same hardware configuration, he’s bound to have a bit of updating to make up for the differences in hardware.

Good luck in any case!

If you take out your hard drive, put another one in and muck with it, then put your hard drive back in, your computer should boot back up without finding any new hardware at all. As far as your operating system is concerned, the last time it ran and this time are both using the same hardware. Nothing changed as far is it can tell. It’s not psychic. While it was sitting over there on the bench it couldn’t tell that you did anything with the computer.

By downloading drivers and such you’re trying to fix a hardware problem with software. That ain’t gonna work. You dislodged something, or re-installed something in the wrong place when you put it all back together. Try taking it back apart then putting it all back together again, much more carefully this time. You may need to remove and re-seat all of your adapter cards.

Thanks for replying. I tried reseating the sound card, but that didn’t fix the problem. Windows is unfortunately, locking up on me now. Normal mode only lasts a few seconds, and safe mode will last a few minutes. I’m typing this from work right now.

When I get home, I think I’ll just reassemble my comp. Maybe clean it out as well. It’s also been awhile since I did a clean install of XP.

BTW, my friend’s cd rom does actually work, but it wouldn’t boot. I tried to change boot settings in BIOS but it was password protected and nobody new the pass. I wanted to clear CMOS but since I saw no visible battery on the motherboard, I wasn’t sure what jumper to play with. I figured it wouldn’t be a bother to put his HDD in my computer… :smack: