Creative Labs X-Fi Elite Pro Soundblaster 7.1 stops working after recent windows 7 update.

SNIP You should check that that OLD soundblaster 7.1 is actually supported by WIN7. A lot of old stuff isn't worth the effort of writing new drivers, i.e. my HP1010 laser printer :(

Yes it's supported, I believe windows update even has a special update for it... but it should not be necessary.

It was also working fine before update... see more in my other postings.

Bye, Skybuck.

Attempt 1 at trying to fix it:

Motherboard integrated realtek audio chip '97 was available in audio device selection pop-up menu. (Bios setting was "auto")

Rebooted, into bios, disabled this chip, reboot into windows 7.

Did notice faster boot time, no more 10 minute hang, could be a fluke of luck or a solved hardware conflict between x-fi soundblaster and realtek audio chip.

Effects of this attempt:

Faster boot time ?

Console launcher does show up, but it looks very weird, all usually controls are missing from it, see link for screenshot:

To me this is starting to seem like a true software fok up of some kind:

The following updates look suspicious to me:

At the top of the list is the evil looking one, which is supposedly to prepare my system for an update to windows 10:

"This update helps Microsoft make improvements to the current operating system in order to ease the upgrade experience to the latest version of Windows."

^ This seems highly evil to me... I will try de-install this next, if it doesn't help I will de-install all the mention updates.

Another update which looks suspicious is the one which affects stream.sys drived based applications ?:

Bye, Skybuck.

However before messing around with updates...

I will first check for newer drivers from creative labs and failing that I will try and re-install the "driver update" from Creative Labs.

Just to see if that will restore operating of the soundblaster.

Perhaps some kind of driver file was removed or damaged by the windows update.

It's worth a try I hope I don't nuke my driver stack and stuff like that... but I think it will be safe to do so.

Bye for now, Skybuck.

Hmm can't check for newer drivers, I am almost not sure if the latest driver I have available from 2014 is the good one, or perhaps the one from 2011.

I would guess the one from 2014, but I am not sure, perhaps I had it documented somewhere.

Well I am not going through with my earlier plan cause everything was working fine before the windows update.

So instead I am going to go with my gutt feeling that this might be an attempt of Microsoft to sabotage my system to try and force people into windows 10.

Or it's just another one of their general windows update f*ck ups.

So I am going to slowly de-install these updates to see if that fixes it... then later I could always try re-installing them if it didn't help and then finally re-install the driver.

Bye, Skybuck.

" SNIP You should check that that OLD soundblaster 7.1 is actually supported by WIN7. A lot of old stuff isn't worth the effort of writing new drivers, i.e. my HP1010 laser printer :( "

I find your posting very weird. If it was working before then that automatically means it's supported, doesn't it ?

Yes it is supported by Creative Labs at the very least, and even Microsoft itself.

By drivers.

Can't reach creative labs website right now... it seems very slow... but it doesn't matter. I am going to try de-installing evil looking updates first, then all if necessary... to see if that fixes it...

If it does... then that basically proves it's a problem with the windows 7 updates !

Bye, Skybuck.

" SNIP You should check that that OLD soundblaster 7.1 is actually supported by WIN7. A lot of old stuff isn't worth the effort of writing new drivers, i.e. my HP1010 laser printer :( "

Also I wouldn't call it "OLD" if I were you ! ;) :)

It's still one of the best soundblasters out there... and one of the only few that does 7.1 great ! ;) Plus great software !

Even Creative Labs does not seem to have a newer product which can match it's class and feature set.

As far as I am concerned X-Fi Elite Pro Soundblaster 7.1 is still state-of-the-art / feature-complete !

I am looking for a new soundblaster for my new system.

If you believe there is anything better out there that can out-match and out-class this soundblaster, in 7.1 capabilities and software feature-set let me know ! ;)

It should be an internal card though... not the weird external things creative labs is selling nowadays... and definetly 7.1 ! ;)

Bye, Skybuck.

Deinstalling update 2, (The suspected evil one) did not result in the sound working again, the console launcher remains looking weird.

I will now first try de-installing all the updates to see if that would fix the sound situation.

Again no more boot-freeze of 10 minutes... kinda interesting.

Bye, Skybuck.

Actually I like to mention something else which happened to today.

The trouble and messing around with updates started for two reasons:

1. First of all tunngle could not finalize anymore... and even more weird:

Disabling the network adapter did not seem to work... the "re-enable" would not show.

The I disabled the internet connection, but it also did not show "re-enable".

So I decided to reboot.

I can't remember if this was before or after the updates.

But it might be related to these updates as well.

Not sure... but I thought I'd mention it in case somebody else is noticing problems with disabling network adapters.

It was kinda odd.

Perhaps this issue would have shown up in future more... but for now I am de-installing these updates.

To see what the effect of that is on my system and sound and so forth.

1. Security concerns... been a while since I installed updates... just these

Bye, Skybuck.

I de-installed the 3 updates, and left the 5 security updates on it to try and safe some time.

The audio/sound is still not working.

It's starting to seem that somehow these updates overwrote some driver files of the x-fi elite pro soundblaster ?

Perhaps a name-space conflict ?

Other explanations could be possible to, maybe somehow a file got corrupted by bad sector or so but that seems somewhat unlikely... could also have been another application or so... or perhaps electrical issue.

I will now continue with de-installing the last 5 security updates to see if that fixes the problem or not.

If it doesn't help... I will re-install all updates and then re-install part of the x-fi drivers/updates to see if that helps.

If that fails.. then fortunately I have iso's on my harddisk of x-fi driver cd's so it should be a snap to re-install them fully if necessary, I hope it doesn't come to that though.

Bye, Skybuck.

Some more note worthy weird behaviours of Microsoft Windows 7:

1. The update which I suspect was evil has strangly enough re-installed itself without my permission or approval.

The funny thing is the date went from 29/6/2015 to 30/6/2015 so I caught them red-handed !

I am 100% I de-installed it... since it's date was 29/6/2015... but apperently Microsoft Windows 7 now secretly re-installs itself without anybody's approval !

Bad Microsoft !

1. Windows Live Mail fail to start while de-installing some of the security patches/updates.

Had to terminate two instances of wlmail.exe...

After de-install and starting windows live mail it worked again.

Now I am going to de-install the last 4... and also the suspected evil one... once again...

To try and bring my system back to previous state before updates... just out of curiosity to see what happens.

Will Microsoft Windows 7 be able to "roll-back" my system via de-installments (without requiring expensive re-store points) to a previous working system... or it will have caused damaged.

I suspect the later...

Bye, Skybuck.

1. I de-installed all recent windows 7 updates from 29 june 2015. I also made sure no updates were selected for installement.

This did not fix the audio situations.

I do notice the system booting real fast now... could be related to disabling realtek audio 97 chip.

1. I did notice my computer would turn on if I turned on the 7.1 denon receiver.

Or when my mother moved the mouse while cleaning... yes my mammie helped me but she won't come again... it was just temporarely...

Anyway there is a possibility of some weird kind of electrical failure... and because my system is now booting pretty rapidly anyway... I am going to unplug all cables... shut everything... drain the system basically...

and then re-plug everything... and then boot again... just to rule out any electrical interference/weirdness.

Also the breakout box was blinking a lot with red lights lately... had to move it quite a bad to prevent it's reception of illegal/unwanted signals.

Perhaps all the mobile/wireless traffic energy might have ended up in the system somehow and causing troubles...

I also unplugged and re-plug one of the mic-lines at the back to plug in my headphone and or 7.0 system while system was on and maybe audio slightly playing or maybe not... not too smart to do that...

However again... the problems only started occuring after windows update...

So electrical issue seems unlikely... but I'd like to rule it out just in case...

So that's what I am going to do first...

And once that's done and it didn't help then I am going to reinstall all the updates... and then later the driver...

The console complained once that it could not find a certain file... which makes me believe somehow a file was either not loaded... or overwritten or deleted...

Kinda weird.

If true it does seem like a serious problem... if I reinstall the audio driver it might overwrite a critical system file... but hopefully that will either not occur because it ain't true... or a warning screen will be given ? or maybe not... maybe windows doesn't warn if system files are about to be overwritten ? I never tried ? or can't remember ? I think they are protected though...

So shutting everything down right now...

(I expect the re-install of the sounds drivers to work... if that doesn't help... I am going to FREAK OUT ! ;) =D)

Bye, Skybuck.

I can rule out an electrical issue mostly... the problem remains, this is what I did though to rule out electrical problem:

1. I unplugged all power cables.

1. Then took a piss ;)

2. Then re-plugged them.

I turned on the devices as follows:

1. First lamp/tv/cable modem

1. Then monitor

2. Then receiver

1. Then PC.

(the monitor is plugged in as the farthest in the power box).

The strange thing is the monitor did not detect the signal properly and could not display anything. The monitor would also not turn off anymore... which could further indicated a weird electrical or software glitch.

Which I considered to be a weird electrical anomoly or simply a software glitch inside the monitor.

I knew the PC was booting and did not went to interrupt it's power supply...

So I figured out which power cable belongs to monitor and then I simply pulled out that cable and plugged it back in.

This time the Monitor could display the windows 7 boot screen and I just tested the power button and it also works.

Surprisingly enough to me the computer did boot normal.. so not a full electrical weird thing... I also noticed it's almost full moon outside ! ;) :)

For now I will have to assume a big fok up by Microsoft Windows 7 Updates... apperently it does not check if it overwrites driver files ?!

Another explanation could be a configuration change... perhaps not all necessary files are being loaded, but I think all that needed to be loaded are loaded... I check via running msconfig... selective bootup and such which I just the way I want it... not all devices and all drivers and such... just the ones that matter.

For now I will have to assume a nuked installation of x-fi elite pro soundblaster driver files.

I will now attempt to re-store this but after I install all the updates.

So two things left to do:

1. Re-install the 8 updates.

1. Re-install x-fi update.

if 2 fails, re-install complete x-fi driver.

Needless to say Microsoft caused another one of my nights to be wasted on this... but this time I took a very thorough investigation of this.

Hopefully my steps above will restore the sound/situation.

Bye, Skybuck.

I let windows update recheck for windows updates to find the ones that were de-installed.

They just finished re-installing.

Now I will try and re-install the x-fi update driver.

It's now 1:32 am in the night... I started hunting down this problem at

So I already spent 2 hours and 30 minutes on it !

Yikes !

Bye, Skybuck.

Well I have some good news:

Re-installing the X-Fi Elite Pro 7.1 update driver fixed the problem.

I also had to re-selection speaker selection to swap left and subwoofer.

All problems now seem solved... boot was still fast... I do notice console a bit slower... but that's probably because svchost.exe still taking up 50% cpu which should go away soon.

The exact driver I installed was:

"SBXF_PCDRV_L11_2_30_0004.exe"

I have no reason to believe that this is not the correct one... I think I already deleted all bad ones long ago.

I didn't bother checking for any updates on the web... the website was slow as previously mentioned... maybe I'll do that sometime in the future.

For now I am relieved/happy that the problem is fixed... even though it took long... but this time I wanted to get to the bottom of it.

I am still not exactly sure what happened but I suspect somehow some X-Fi driver files got deleted ?!

I suspect windows update to be the culprit... however maybe it could also be some x-fi trial software that freaked out... not sure about that... or maybe disabling/enabling adapters had something to do with it... or maybe even os-memory-corruption due to bugs or something.

For now I leave you with a nice screenshot showing everything the way it's supposed to be ! ;) =D and also to prove problem is now fixed/solved:

For now I will keep running my system with realtek audio 97 chip disabled perhaps this will solve boot freeze forever ;)

Or perhaps it was already solved with an windows update or perhaps fluke of luck ! ;) :)

Anyway enough time spent on this !

If this problem ever occurs again... I will just re-install drivers.

Also next time: put laundary in washing machine first ! ;) =D

Bye, Skybuck =D

And to celibrate and enjoy my sound system once again I leave you with this hopefully very much enjoyable link/music video:

In case video goes down scroll way down to see what it was :)

Spoiler alert: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

RITA ORA - Poison

Bye, Skybuck

Do you have a license to drive that thing?

When in doubt disable on-board audio, but is not needed to make things work. I use on-board, usb, bluetooth, and PCIe audio I/O together all the time and no worries as long as my license to drive it covers how to.

You have to pay attention to what's in the Windows Sound diaog first, then f*ck with you devices specific controller gizmo, not the other way around. In your audio apps DAW etc. you can point to which audio/dev/function you want in there, which takes precedence over Windows sound contol panel settings. You haven't evn started expressing your expectations from all this foofoo shit you invented to do.

Rip out everything you've installed for your fancy elite sound card, especially ALL that shit YOU THOUGHT might work, including Deleting driver files when asked. Power-down. Flip the switch off on the back of the power supply so you keep a ground in the case. Make sure your fancy sound card is firmly in its slot, by removing it them placing it into the slot more carefully this time. Power-up to safe mode. Does the fancy audio card show with bangs on it in device manager, yes, good. Install the Latest Correct Drivers and Application kits SPECIFIC to this fancy sound card from Creative Labs, not some joker who says he made it all better but f***ed up a bunch of other stuff, and not a bunch of fluff you think might work. Let the drivers install completely. Change you Default Playback and Recording to point to the proper card. Reboot and make sure the setting stayed.

VIOLA!

working sound.

You seem to be the kind of person that enjoys running all over yourself then screaming fro helpo when simple troubleshooting works every time.

WOW!, What a long day to fix a simple problem. And it isn't even close to getting fixed.

When you get you 2015/2016 system, be sure to get one completely encased in 1/2" thick epoxy resin so you cannot get into it and do this shit again to the poor thing.

Gosh, but where's the big-ass seven DOT one you were bragging about, eh?