Hi people. I need some help. I recently upgraded from Windows '98SE to Windows XP Professional Edition. My Sound Blaster Live card worked great with Win'98, but after the upgrade, it won't work at all with XP. When XP would try to install drivers, it wouldn't work with drivers from the Creative CD (with Win'98 drivers), but I assumed that this was normal, and everything would be fine when installing the new SBLive drivers for XP at Creative's web site. Here's where things go bad, though.... When I double-click the 9 meg XP drivers file, it goes through all the motions, making some extractions, showing me that it is 99% ready to begin installation, then 100%, then WHAM, right in my face, it says it cannot detect Creative hardware. What? Windows detected it fine for Windows '98SE? Why not now with XP? So Windows detects the hardware to begin with, then when trying to identify the problem using XP's help and support section, my computer is checked and it says Windows cannot find any CREATIVE drivers to install. (There are drivers out there right now, but that's besides the point. The point is, Windows software itself can figure out what company's hardware is physically installed, but Creative's sotware cannot.) I've stipped down my computer. I realized Windows was using my modem for sound, so once I uninstalled and removed the modem, I was reduced to no sound whatsoever. All the PCI slots I left besides my sound card was my 3dfx Voodoo 3 3500 TV card (which I had to find home-made drivers for online, but I don't think those drivers would cause a problem for my sound card). Creative's people were completely useless on the phone. I still have no idea why Creative's driver updates think I don't have a Creative sound card physically installed when Windows at least does. A friend suggested I try disabling IRQ automatic steering but I'm not sure that'll do any good. (I've already tried moving the sound card around in various PCI slots too, for what it's worth.) Any suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks.

Hello CG: Seems as if you have tried many of the obvious solutions. The odd thing is that I have an SB Live Value and XP picked it up and installed native drivers. Have you tried removing any other device that might be using sound (including the SB,) uninstalling the Creative Xp drivers, then reinstalling the card and seeing if XP will install its native drivers? I have had sucess with that in some situations (XP and the SB Live.) However, I have a friend who is a sysadmin and one of the sharpest hardware techs I know experience problems like yours and was unable to resolve it. She spent hours on the phone and in e-mails with Creative and eventually bought a different card. She was disgusted with tech support at Creative and I almost feel sorry for them. She will not let this rest. I should know. I used to date her. I'm not a hardware engineer but can only imagine on some mobos or BIOS's there is a conflict of some kind that prevents the SB from working properly in XP. In any case, it's not just your PC. Also, are you running FAT32 or NTFS? Every machine I've seen this problem with was an upgrade where the user chose NTFS. I've had better luck with these cards in W2K and XP if FAT32 was the filesystem. Sorry I can't offer any other advice but will repost if I find a good solution. I have at least 10 clients with the same problem, all of whom cannot run FAT32. Happy Holidays!

Are you running a VIA chipset? If so, the PCI Latency patch at http://www.networking.tzo.com/net/software/ has worked for several people on other message boards. Caution, this patch is a beta version. Should you run into trouble don't forget that XP has Driver Rollback and System Restore utilities, be sure you have a recent Restore Point set in case of trouble. LL

I'm not sure if it's a Via chipset or not. Here is a page which provides better details: http://www.active-hardware.com/english/reviews/mainboard/be6.htm The computer is an Abit Be6 motherboard, with a Pentium 3 850 processor, 640 Ram, 3dfx Voodoo 3 3500 TV AGP, Sigma Designs Hollywoood Plus DVD decoder, Lucent Modem (taken out due to its desire to become my sound card), and Realtek ethernet adapter. As stated before, I'm attempting to use my Creative Sound Blaster Live with the Windows XP setup. I have taken things out and tried to minimize the hardware needed to figure out what's going on, but so far still no luck. I have the latest Bios update available from Abit, dated July of 2000. I'll download the patch to see if it can help me. Thanks for the replies. I really appreciate them. If there are anymore suggestions out there, please reply to this thread.

After taking out some components within my computer, I was able to successfully install the native Creative SBLive drivers. I have sound now, but still can't get the newest XP drivers from Creative's web site to work.

That is the exact issue that I have been experiencing! I have not slept for days because of this. The device manager states the card is installed and working perfectly, but I dont get any sound. When I tried to install theXP drivers from Creative,I was also told that it could not detect the SoundBlaster.What components did you remove CGMneon? Please letme know. I wish to be able tosleep tonight.

Harry, my modem was not letting me use my sound card. Unfortunately, though, I may have sound, but I don't have Creative's newest drivers installed, as XP doesn't detect any Creative hardware. In your case, perhaps if Windows detects your sound card and tries to detect new hardware drivers, make sure and scour the directories manually. If you have Windows try to do things itself, it may do what mine did: not succeed.