X-Fi Elite Pro 7.1 soundblaster seems to be dead.

I've opened them up and there's an inch of yellowish-brown fluff over everything. And they're working. What's it's doing is applying a thermal blanket over everything, helping to wear down the atomic micron-die pathways over the design life of chips.

If you want to coat exposed metal pins, use clear women's nail polish. I personally prefer shocking pink when labeling vacuum tubes for easy insertion into my amplifiers.

I knew an engineering type, though, and as part of his QC routine: Every year, he totally disassembled all the parts, (hell, go for the thrill and take down the power supply, too, w/out first making a lightbulb capacitor discharge unit), find a wall, put some newspapers next to and behind it, where each board is laid up vertically against. Now get a spray bottle with alcohol and a toothbrush and soft-bristle parts brush. Spray liberally and clean thoroughly. Your elbows will tired when everything is spiffy. Take an rubber ink erasure (arts or office supply store) and clean the slotted insertion contacts before applying WD40/60 or TV tuner with a soft cloth.

I've got a 60gal compressor for cutting through thick, the first part, which is where I'd stop unless someone wants to pay me to rebuild/ condition a machine. If all else but an accumulative horror of filth is fine, yes, it'll come back *as new*.

Ever worked on a someone who wears toxic-grade, pungent perfume, a non- smoker's machine that's sat underneath a bird cage at least for an age or more?

Ever think about giving up on the whole computer thing and just take up making wooden shoes?

--
Paul Hovnanian     mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com
------------------------------------------------------------------
Shoot straight you bastards! Don't make a mess of it.

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gh

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be

I thought you were twelve?

I have some very strange results to report:

I tried the knoppix 6.7.1 live cd and when it boots this female voice says something and it also says it on shutdown.

So apperently some parts of the soundblaster are still working.

However when I try to play an MP3 in knoppix no sound plays.

I am starting to suspect that it's either:

1. Something strange with the breakout box, I suspended the sound, and it's some kind of software/hardware problem, it tries to remember it setting and it gets confused ?!?

1. It also feels like some kind of malware attack, perhaps aimed at services, but this wouldn't make sense for knoppix, and perhaps hardware attack against x-fi, though this seems hard to believe.

Mostly likely:

1. It's either some kind of weird hardware-based-memory error for the x-fi elite or it's breakout box.

or

1. It's some kind of hardware damage but still allows to play sound somehow ? perhaps the onboard audio is being re-routed through soundblaster outputs is such a thing possible ?!?

It's very strange...

1. Maybe the breakout box is simply dead or something... I shall try power down the computer, and disconnect the breakout box to see if that helps.

Bye, Skybuck.

Damn! You're dumb!

Damn! You're dumb!

Damn! You ARE dumb!

Damn! You're dumb!

You made one listing number but listed two elements DOH!

Damn! You're dumb!

NO! YOU are strange. Damn! You're dumb!

Are the optical ports putting out light?

Damn! You're dumb!

I tried to repeat the sound that Knoppix produces by booting again into knoppix after disabling one harddisk and also disconnecting the breakout box (or maybe not ?).

This time I did not press enter during the Knoppix boot screen, no sound was perceived.

Perhaps the sound was disabled by the breakout box, or perhaps not.

Perhaps the sound I thought to be perceived was just a fluck of luck from the soundblaster before final death.

I am not that familiar with Knoppix so maybe I imagined the female voice, but I don't think so ;) why would I imagine a female voice ? :)

Also during shutdown there was no female voice anymore...

Pretty strange, I also googled a bit, some people write also having these problems, and some of them wrote they unplugged their soundblaster, booted, and then shutdown and then rebooted... perhaps strange bios or strange windows issues.

There is also some slight brownish on the x-fi pcb near the edge, but I think I have seen that before... there is also a somewhat strange faint burning smell in my house, probably car fumes, but I am not sure... I also put some extra tape on vents to keep stuff outside...

I have turned down the fans on antec 1200 a little bit, there was something else I wanted to mention but forgot... hmmm.. what was it ? hmm...

Oh yeah now I remember, here is some whacky theory: Some strange mobile devices wireless signals inteferred with the breakout box's infared/signalling and caused some kind of lock up/mis configuration ?!?

When I zap the TV with the remote control sometimes the breakout box blue led turns RED to indicate an invalid signal was received... so it does seem to receive signals not ment for it...

Also the breakout box still seems to respond to pushes against it's knobs which are used to enable/disable sound.

I also wonder if perhaps a windows shutdown/system update has sometime to do with it, but there are no logs of that in the event logs... last update was from 13-ocotober-2011.

Oh yeah there is one more thing I wanted to write:

I have done some pretty heavy gaming the last few weeks, so perhaps the GT

520 with passive cooling still managed to FRIE the X-FI which is directly below it... the GT 520 temperature is about 45 to 47 degrees or so... so perhaps still to hot ?

Bye, Skybuck.

Ad why do you think I am dumb ? You give no reason... very convincing... NOT...

Bye, Skybuck.

Because you think that someone hacked your soundcard.

Oopsie:

R.I.P. Personal Computer comes to mind ;)

Bye, Skybuck.

" Because you think that someone hacked your soundcard. "

Perhaps you should then read up on programmable chips.

Bye, Skybuck.

With the antec 1200, you usually clean the filters once a month. if you are going 6 months to a year between washing out those filters, then no shit its going to overheat.

Leave it to you to take one of the best designed cased to ever exist and fuckitallup.

If you are seeing yellowisgh brown stuff all over your components in your PC, stop smoking!!!!!

You dead wrong about the antec 1200 case, it's a very bad case.

I have come to learn some lessons: if it's not a total system builder then don't do bussiness with them, antec doesn't give a shit if your electronics die.

There are 5 enemies for pc's:

1. dust
2. overheat
3. electric shock
4. physical shock
5. bugs

It shouldn't be to hard for you to figure out why antec 1200 is bad based on the top 5 above.

Cleaning a PC on the inside is one thing which should not be necessary, concerning the antec 1200 case here is a hint: bad sectors ! ;)

You've been warned.

Bye, Skybuck.

You are a complete idiot.

As well as that, he's changed his id to get past all the filters. Had to add his new id to my filter list and will add each and every new id he creates. He'll get sick of creating new ids long before I get tired of adding them to my filters.

I used to think no one could be as stupid as skytard. Now I'm not so sure. He's setting a new low standard of idiocy.

--

Krypsis

Thank god,

The soundblaster is alive and well.

My DreamPC is one bad fighting machine !

It's fighting against it's own DEATH !

It has resurrected itself !

I connected all 4 harddisks, I also ran some Microsoft Repair tool from the harddisk itself.

It mentioned it did not ran completely successfull it mentioned it did not find a boot manager, it mentioned an OSFailOver or something.

I send the report data to Microsoft for further improvement.

Today I boot the computer and I forgot to press F11 to boot from Knoppix DVD... and amazingly Windows 7 came back alive !

Apperently enough bad sectors have been repaired so it can now function properly.

It's pretty damn amazing.

However I have experiences with machine deaths lol... and I know it could be a fluke of luck ! ;) =D

So I am enjoying my music to the max at the moment ! LOL.

Me so happy that the soundblaster still alive and kicking ! ;) =D

I am also convinced Hitachi harddisks are pretty good, they managed to recover from death ! ;) =D

The first thing I am going to do now that my Windows 7 has come back alive is to burn more Linux Distro so I can enjoy my Creative X-Fi Elite Pro 7.1 Soundblaster from Linux Distro's like Ubuntu and Linux Mint. (both debian based.)

After having used Knoppix 6.7.1 for a few days I am now convinced that Linux is pretty usuable, stable and has valuable tools which I don't know if Window's world has an equivalent.

For example Linux has "disk management tool" which can read "S.M.A.R.T." data from harddisks... I would not be surprised if there are perhaps windows tools which can do this, so I will have to google that sometime.

However the nice thing about Linux Distro is I don't have to search and find it... it's already there... However by burning a couple of Linux Distro's to DVD you can't go wrong.

I think "LIVE CD's and DVD's is the best way for Linux to make inroads into Windows world and try to lure away windows users". At least people can run Linux from DVD and don't have to worry about it.

Maybe I will even install linux on a harddisk, but with Live DVD's there might be no need to do that and simply continue using DVD's. So Linux could be a second-hand/second-option operating system and I am perfectly fine with that ! ;) =D

I also tell you the reason why I am going to burn more Linux Distro from Windows 7 now that it has come back alive:

I CANNOT BURN DISTROS from KNOPPIX ?!? (Because knoppix probably needs the DVD to remain inside... and I only have one DVD drive).

Perhaps running a virtual machine inside knoppix might make burning possible but I don't count on that ! ;) =D

Today is a happy day ! I do feel my Dad felt sorry for me and shine some light from heaven on me and make my computer work again ! LOL.

Bye, Skybuck =D

What makes you think I changed my id ?

Get a clue dude.

Do you really think people have just one e-mail account from their ISP ? What is the ISP stops functioning ? You that dumb ?

Did you really think people give a f*ck about their names on usenet ?!?

Stick your filter up your ass it's useless and stop bitching about it.

And lastly: I am always called Skybuck, learn to create a filter on the word: "Skybuck"

And your that stupid ?: NO, Nobody can be that stupid, not even you.

YOU JUST BEING A BIG FILTHY PRICK AND EVERYBODY KNOWS IT BUT YOU.

Bye, Bye, Skybuck