Sound Card Purchase Dilemma

Very strange and you're sure you haven't an antivirus or similar impeding installation.
Why doesn't 'Sound' show your Audigy connected to your speakers like mine.
I'd be tempted to do a full system backup and quick reinstall of Windows and try it. You could always reinstall your backup.
It depends how important it is to you and how adventurous you feel.

Like every six months, I reinstall Windows which tend to 'freshen' my PC really good.
I have two backup images and a cloned disk as backup. Good point to have a "clean" windows installation and try to see if the sound card driver will install. I did not think of that. I'll re-clone the disk and I will use a 'new' Windows this evening when I get back.

Thanks for the thought. Will get back to report.

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Installed a clean Window 10, and tried Creative driver installation. It worked. Why on earth would the driver not install in my daily Windows OS? Really frustrating indeed.

Why on earth would the driver not install in my daily Windows OS?


Because it's Microsoft Windows. Anyway now you can enjoy your sound card which is pretty good for the price.

Sorry for coming late, but...

Onboard sound uses to have Realtek chips, but many discrete sound cards do too and the same drivers might be appliable (it doesn't way mean that both types of solutions shoud have the same quality or performance, even if all are from Realtek there're many different chipsets, and a hw sound device does not only have the "basic" chipset, although I'm not too expert in the matter).

Before installing my SB Audigy FX v2, I uninstalled the onboard sound drivers, then I went to the BIOS/UEFI Setup (B/U-S) and disabled the onboard sound. This is what I recall for sure. I have the norm of always booting up something after doing B/U-S changes. I don't recall the exact sequence but it could have been this:

- Uninstall onboard sound drivers.
- Reboot to B/U-S and disable onboard audio.
- Reboot to Windows. Now we're w/o sound hw, drivers, or OS installing requests.
- Shut down, unplug from mains, install the card and boot up to Windows.
- If prompted about installing the new hw, click Cancel (I've seen this direction many times in all kinds of peripherals).
- Run the *.exe *.msi or similar that installs the new hw and its sw as intended by the manufacturer.

Despite the additional reboot, this install couldn't have been smoother. I had had a much harder time (several days researching) installing the onboard audio, because I wanted (and got) a functional "Realtek HD Audio Manager" with drivers as modern as possible. I had to use ancient drivers and leave a shortcut to "C:\Program Files\Realtek\Audio\HDA\RtkNGUI64.exe". With or without manager, the onboard sound quality was too basic in this case, although it varies among motherboards.

Strange!
Since last week, my computer sound has been loosing it's glory.
When I play any multimedia, the first few seconds sounds okay then the volume goes really low and kinda distorted.
I tried YouTube, audio and video on my computer, and they all act differently, but still very low.
Please what's going on?

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JLArranz said:

Sorry for coming late, but...

Onboard sound uses to have Realtek chips, but many discrete sound cards do too and the same drivers might be appliable (it doesn't way mean that both types of solutions shoud have the same quality or performance, even if all are from Realtek there're many different chipsets, and a hw sound device does not only have the "basic" chipset, although I'm not too expert in the matter).

Before installing my SB Audigy FX v2, I uninstalled the onboard sound drivers, then I went to the BIOS/UEFI Setup (B/U-S) and disabled the onboard sound. This is what I recall for sure. I have the norm of always booting up something after doing B/U-S changes. I don't recall the exact sequence but it could have been this:

- Uninstall onboard sound drivers.
- Reboot to B/U-S and disable onboard audio.
- Reboot to Windows. Now we're w/o sound hw, drivers, or OS installing requests.
- Shut down, unplug from mains, install the card and boot up to Windows.
- If prompted about installing the new hw, click Cancel (I've seen this direction many times in all kinds of peripherals).
- Run the *.exe *.msi or similar that installs the new hw and its sw as intended by the manufacturer.

Despite the additional reboot, this install couldn't have been smoother. I had had a much harder time (several days researching) installing the onboard audio, because I wanted (and got) a functional "Realtek HD Audio Manager" with drivers as modern as possible. I had to use ancient drivers and leave a shortcut to "C:\Program Files\Realtek\Audio\HDA\RtkNGUI64.exe". With or without manager, the onboard sound quality was too basic in this case, although it varies among motherboards.

Would my current issue (Post #27) be fixed with your comprehensive instructions?

caxtin said:

Strange!
Since last week, my computer sound has been loosing it's glory.
When I play any multimedia, the first few seconds sounds okay then the volume goes really low and kinda distorted.
I tried YouTube, audio and video on my computer, and they all act differently, but still very low.
Please what's going on?

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Would my current issue (Post #27) be fixed with your comprehensive instructions?

Idk for sure. I like partition imaging programs to do experiments like this and if they go bad, return to the starting point. Do you have sound devices in Device Manager foreign to you new sound card? I'd ask the same about Programs and features.

If you want to rectify, you'd have to uninstall any Programs and Features entry related to either the Creative sound card or the onboard audio, better in this order (don't bother about Device Manager while in the middle). If you happen to have both (or if you have to uninstall more than one entry), don't reboot after doing the first uninstall(s), only after the last one. Go to BIOS and disable onboard audio, reboot to Windows and if you're prompted to install new hw click cancel. Afterwards launch the Creative installer.

There're other possible routes.

If you have disabled onboard audio but you have not uninstalled its software, you might not be able to uninstall the latter well, but the Creative card and its software would be a problem. The most orthodox method would be:

- Uninstall only the Creative sw.
- Shut down and remove the Creative card.
- Boot to BIOS and enable onboard audio.
- Boot to Windows and install the onboard audio software over what is installed.
- Reboot and uninstall the onboard audio software.
- Reboot to BIOS and disable onboard audio.
- Boot to Windows, shut down and attach the card.
- Boot to Windows, click cancel if prompted to install new hw, and launch Creative installer.

In theory, Windows can have several sound "cards" (counting onboard audio as one) installed at the same time, what would simplify some procedures, but the motherboard, the onboard audio or the Creative card might not play well this game. To recover, you have to go to a phase where onboard sound software and hardware, in this order, has been uninstalled and disabled respectively, the Creative card is attached, its software isn't installed yet, and Windows has recently booted.

When I upgraded from my onboard Realtek ALC892 to my Sound BlasterX G6, I made sure to use DDU to remove all Realtek drivers (using Safe Mode) and turned it off in my UEFI BIOS. So far, I've had no issues and much better sound and performance - only a few FPS here and there (which was not the main reason why I upgraded).

I'm not sure what's going on with your computer and sound card, but on the previous software install issue, when I have a driver install problem I can sometimes use the 7z archiver program to extract the dlls from the executable installer and then go into Device Manager and navigate directory to the extracted dlls to install manually.

Possible tip: If you're piping audio through HDMI of DP that could be an issue. I turn that off in the video card control panel... I use 5.1 audio so don't need or want it.