No sound after installing X-Fi XtremeMusic driver

[Althea]

Hey. I have spent $110 on this sound card but I am not able to get the sound from it. I don’t know that what is wrong with Creative. I keep searching and every time I observe a "solution" and answer is “Creative sucks “That’s why the soundcards don't work. Now the store I bought it from says that they can't take it back because I had it for over two weeks etc. I didn't know this would give me this mouch trouble. I use 2.18.0013 drivers on Windows 7 64bit and everything is installed. According to windows, the sound even works. I play something; it shows on the volume meter. But I can't hear a thing. I've tried with different speakers, headphones so that aren’t the problem. Can someone please help me?

[Badrunath]

Hey, I can feel your pain brother. I spent most of last night and half of today running through the various drivers that includes:

• SBXF_PCDRV_LB_2_18_0004.exe
• SBXF_PCDRV_LB_2_18_0013.exe
• SBXF_W7DRVBETA_US_1_18_0008.exe

But none of them appear to function on my Dell XPS 710 running a clean W7 Pro installation. I get a little bit of sound sometimes but it's garbled and distorted and then eventually stops. Creative has more than enough time to get drivers running for W7; it's sort of embarrassing (I'd be embarrassed). I haven't had any problems getting W7 drivers for all of my other stuff including a few pieces of kit that are older than the XtremeMusic card. If I get anything working, I will post back.

[MahaGuru]

I have done a lot of retries and still no luck. I am pulling the card and am not really going to look back. I'm sorry your supplier says you can't return it. I would re-approach them and indicate that I bought it because Windows 7 drivers were available on the manufacturer's website and that when you installed it you realized that the Creative drivers were inherently faulty. It's not your fault. I would keep the pressure on them. My card came with my computer a few years ago, so I have no reservations in dumping it. I would say that about 80% of what I've read on Creative and these X-Fi cards is pretty bad. I read with the full understanding that there are always going to be more negative comments than good ones (it's the nature of the democracy -- satisfied users don't post as much), but the fact that Creative doesn't have stable Windows 7 drivers at this juncture speaks a lot for a company whose resources are rather plentiful. At least I have something to fall back on without spreading out some more dough: I am going to try to use my external Presonus Firewire audio device as my windows sound device and just deal with it. I really don't give a hoot about simulating surround formats.

[GeforceUser]

I believe that Dell require to put out a new driver; though I believe it would need to come from Creative first with any specific mods made by Dell. I have an XPS 710 also and it has an onboard "High Definition Audio" sound unit. So, I yanked the Creative board out of the machine, went into the BIOS and enabled the onboard sound. Windows 7 found it right away and installed a default driver for it. Then I went to my Dell account and downloaded the Dell "SigmaTel" driver (with Vista64 selected for the OS) and installed that. Works also. On the back of my XPS 710 right next to where there is an optical output (in the upper part of the back) there was a cover, covering all of the individual ins/outs for the onboard HD audio. I really couldn't be happier. I don't need EAX; it’s overrated anyway IMO. Maybe there's other "features" that isn’t there, but I'm not missing it much at all. Also, there's no Creative stuff creatively polluting the heck out of my system and registry. After I found out that everything was working I reinstalled Windows 7 to make absolutely sure there was no more Creative baggage lying around on this particular system. I am going to take the XtremeMusic card and install it in my son's XPHome computer, which has an older slower motherboard that could tangibly benefit from PCI audio.

[Bull50]

It’s quite funny that Creative went from the card to have back in the ISA days (I loved my AWE32) to some of the worst customer service in the business. They really should just give it up and go under like any other company that treats customers the way they do. Did they actually think not relasing working drivers for Windows 7 (and before that Windows Vista) was really the way to strike back at Microsoft for the changes MS made to DirectX? The exuse that "we didn't have enough time to develop working drivers" is pure bunk. Vista was avilable to developers three years before it was released, and Windows 7 for nearly 2 but nope, we still are stuck holding the short end of the stick because Creative cannot get their act together.

[!const]

I have the same problem with an XPS710 and while I don't want to invest money to buy another sound card, Creative leave me no choice. Giving Creative feedback on how betrayed I feel by their lack of customer care means*"no more money from me" would be pointless as it* clearly doesn't worry them or they would have working drivers out, so I will inform DELL that the DELL brand is getting tranished by its association with Creative and urge them to take them of the qualified supplier list. Perhaps if DELL does, Creative might wake up enough before it puts itself out of business. After 17 years of being a loyal customer Creative have lost me. The cost of a new sound card will be offset by the addition of a story of terrible service I can use in presentations but it is still sad to see a once great company start to die.