Hello. I recently bought a new computer and I was going to update the Soundblaster Audigy 2 ZS driver, but I kept recieving a message that my "Soundblaster Audigy 2 isn't detected. Are you sure you have one?" The Audigy 2 is listed in device manager and I have a "Creative Driver" in Add/Remove programs, but I can't find any creative folders, even when I do a search. The Gateway people said it was located in the partition, but when I look through that area I can't find it either. There are no Creative menu items or control panel, but I blame this on Gateway's cheap drivers. (Install and driver discs are no longer included with your PC.) I hear sound. I opened it up and there is a Audigy 2 ZS card in the machine. Any ideas what the problem is?

They probably installed the old creative drivers to cover the broader band of the DVD play/playback sound recording from earlier creative labs products. What I would do is download the newer drivers to the desktop and then uninstall the creative drivers through the device manager/uninstall drivers and then reboot and install the newer drivers and see what happens. http://www.guru3d.com/article/sound/120/ Go there to read a complete 10 page article about your "creative labs soundblaster audigy 2 zs" sound card and see some nice pics too IN THE MATTERS OF STYLE, swim with the current; in matters of principle, STAND LIKE A ROCK

This may, or may not, be the problem, but I seem to remember something very similar to this happening with some Dell machines a year or so ago. Come to find out that Dell had purchased some Creative cards to put in their machines, but the agreement they had with Creative was such that Creatgive didn't provide any support. So, Creative used a chipset on those boards that would not allow it to be recognized as one of their boards and any drivers from the Creative site would not load. These users would get the same message that you saw even though the card was recognized in their machine's device manager. Go here and take a look: http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=dim_audio&message.id=39953 Hopefully this is not your problem.

Unforunately, that did turn out to be my problem. Besides having a worthless driver with no control options and no applications included with it (or a driver disc), I also have no way to update the driver since Creative says the card doesn't exist. After talking to four people and wasting six hours, Gateway refused to give me the genuine version of the card. So, I paid $2800 bucks for a computer with no graphic driver or sound driver discs. (They did include a Microsoft Works disc and a Power DVD disc, however. Great priorities, guys.) They also gave me a hundred dollar sound card that's basically worthless. My thousand dollar monitor no longer comes with a DVI cord because they physically REACHED IN THE BOX AND REMOVED IT (no longer included). I could send the computer back but they told me I would still have to pay them $400. I will die before I order another Gateway. As far as I'm concerned, they can't go out of business fast enough.