Weird xfi driver problem - any thoughts?

I recently purchased the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro Series PCI Express Sound Card and installed it on my Win7 x64 Home Premium system. I had some initial problems installing the card, but after running an update from the Creative website (Product Identification Module Update) everything sorted itself out. The autoupdater kept on crashing while installing drivers and apps, so I had to download and install things manually. All that went okay and things worked fine.

I discovered that the Creative drivers have a bug that stems from the implementation of Vista. With Vista Microsoft disabled all calls to Directsound3D, breaking the sound systems for all previous games using DirectX and EAX (but not OpenAL). That is why we have Alchemy of course, and that works fine. However, with some games, Alchemy's dsound.dll doesn't unload properly. This breaks the ability of the Creative drivers to let the Creative software switch between the audio modes of xfi cards (Game mode, Entertainment mode, Audio Creation mode). The selection is simply stuck on Game mode until you either reboot, or unload all the software that interact with the card (including volume panel), disable it in hardware management, and re-enable it.

This was very new to me, and I wasn't quite in the habit yet, so I switched mode without the reboot. Oddly the card responded, but added a constant background noise. I couldn't get rid of it, so I decided to try the new beta drivers for the card. That fixed the problem, but it created another problem. While the card functions correctly and has perfect sound, I cannot get the Creative software to recognize it any more. It just responds that there is no supported device detected. This is not a problem with the beta drivers! Unfortunately it is far more general.

In reality, it is a little app, that is part of the drivers called "Creative Audio Control Panel" found in C:\Program Files (x86)\Creative\AudioCS\CTAudCS.exe that powers the ability of the software to recognize and configure the card. If that baby doesn't find the card, you cannot configure it with any other app. However, Creative Autoupdater has no problem finding it and suggesting all sorts of software.

I have cleaned out all the apps and the drivers, run Driver Cleaner, Driver Sweeper, CrapCleaner, defragged registry, reinstalled various versions and modifications of drivers and apps, more times than I can recount, but nothing helps. I am stuck here, and just get the same message: "The audio device supported by this application is not detected. The application will exit". The audio itself works fine, there is nothing unusual in device manager, drivers are loaded fine, all services are up and running, yet Creative Audio Control Panel just can't find it and let me change settings on the card. All other Creative software of course can't find it either, and also respond with a error message, although each one is phrased slightly different.

I have googled the crap out of this problem and found that it has been prevalent with Creative drivers since Vista, with a few cases belonging to XP, along the breadth of the Audigy and xfi cards series. The consensus seems to be that only a format and fresh installation of the OS fixes the problem... Seriously, after 7 years Creative still doesn't have an explanation or a fix?

Anyway, I loathe to backup all my useless crap and reinstall win7. Does anybody have a good suggestion here? Any feedback (even stuff I might have tried already) will be appreciated.

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/13/2011 08:39PM by Morbid.

Seems a bit harsh having to do a re-install doesn't it. I've sent you a pm on something you could try. Also, try /run/services.msc and see if you can turn off any automatic services, updater etc. related to creative. Set to disabled or manual if they exist.

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[www.mediafire.com] Some say you should click it, you know you want to. [www.gp4central.com] <----GP4 Central



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/13/2011 10:19PM by mortal.

Yes I think it is quite extreme, that the self-proclaimed world leader of the computer audio market, has such a crippling bug in their drivers. I had the card installed for a couple of days, and now I have to format?

Thanks for the little trick in the PM. That helped a lot with other things, but unfortunately did not solve the main issue.

There are no Creative services, when the system is cleaned as detailed above. I have tried to disable Creative services once the drivers are installed and up and running. That gave me a BSOD. I didn't even think Win7x64 had those any more. I also did a clean boot (where all startup files and services are disabled) and uninstalled + reinstalled in this condition. Unfortunately, that was a no go too. So it isn't something that is "running" on my system, that is blocking the creative drivers from hooking properly.

I think it is more likely that something got deleted/corrupted/left behind.

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/13/2011 11:45PM by Morbid.

I had to download (and pay extra for) the DTS pack for my creative sound card, to enble optical 5.1 Surround For my reciever. (my main speakers for my pc died, so i hooked up my kenwood reciever i had for my tv/ps3 etc)

The quality was @#$%&. i would get bad crackling and it would just turn off for 10 seconds and come back for no reason, it would also switch between the front and rears randomly. Like the device thought my rear speakers where my fronts. really odd.

I did some searching, and i found these:

[forums.creative.com]

And its basicly removed all issues i have had. better sound, much better surround sound. im really stoked i found them. its a all in one install aswell, so you get EVERY driver/program that you need. rather than creatives incredibly stupid "lets do it individualy"


maybe they might recognise the card? worth a shot

It's got me beat, hopefully Neil's fix will work for you.

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[www.mediafire.com] Some say you should click it, you know you want to. [www.gp4central.com] <----GP4 Central

That is the Daniel K drivers. That particular package does not cover my card. I have the SB0886 model, which is covered in this package:

[forums.creative.com]

Unfortunately, they produce the same results.

There is also some driver packages called PAX, made by Robert McClelland. Unfortunately they don't help either.

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

Ended up doing a format. Reinstalled Windows7 and ran the newest official non-beta drivers straight from the first boot. Works perfectly.

I feel a mix of relief and shock. I can't believe Creative have not addressed this issue yet. I mean, I can find examples all over the internet, even on the official Creative forums. I hope the drivers decide to stick around this time and not screw up my OS.

Thanks for pitching in Mortal and NeilPearson. I don't hope I get the chance to return the favour, but if I do, I will.

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

If I see you at my local watering hole, you can shout me a

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[www.mediafire.com] Some say you should click it, you know you want to. [www.gp4central.com] <----GP4 Central

If I get to Oz, you will know about it, before I board the plane.

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

LOL, I've been tearing my hair out (what's left of it anyway) trying to sort an ad-hoc networking problem, at least a format is unlikely. Seems my wifi has an illegal ip and there's no valid downstream NAT. I bought Connectify Pro, and I've been waiting two weeks for an answer to a support ticket.

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[www.mediafire.com] Some say you should click it, you know you want to. [www.gp4central.com] <----GP4 Central

I hope you figure it out. PC problems have a tendency to completely hijack your mind, so that considerations about the problem continually run as a disturbing undercurrent in the consciousness. It's damn annoying to have other experiences in life polluted by that. I formatted just to get rid of it. I know next to nothing about wifi, so I have no idea if a format will fix your problem.

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

I did solve it, by creating a WAN Miniport in networking and starting the hotspot from the command line, wasted $US19 on useless software that was supposed to do the job. And I still have not received an answer from the support team. :-/

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[www.mediafire.com] Some say you should click it, you know you want to. [www.gp4central.com] <----GP4 Central