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[Twistan]

Hi I'm having an issue with my soundcard on an older machine.

The card is a Sound Blaster Live! model #CT-4830. My OS is windows xp.
I've tried failingly to get it to work and nothing seems to do the trick. I get no sound while surfing the net or listening to windows media player.
The funny thing is though, that I do get sound while playing World of Warcraft.

I'm wondering if this might be a driver issue? I've tried downloading LiveDrvUni-Pack(ENG) off of a few sites including creative's. Only thing I haven't really tried is booting into safe mode and uninstalling all drivers, then letting windows auto install them.. I just find it very strange my sound will work with the application WoW, yet not work with anything else. So I figure it must be something wrong with the wav, line-in, or directsound drivers, however I do have no idea how to update them.

Any help is appreciated!

[MrGroove]

HI Twistan,

Welcome to the site!

It defiantly sounds like a driver problem. It's quite "odd' indeed that the sound IS working in WOW but not outside of Windows. Honestly however, if you have sound in WOW, what else do you need sound for . The sad thing is I just threw away about 10 old Sound Blaster Driver CD's...... 30 days earlier I would have been able to build an ISO for ya.. Sorry about that!

Ok, so first of all what I would try is to delete ALL traces of the current drivers from the system.

1) Follow the standard "Add Remove Programs" and remove all the drivers you see.
2) Open Device Manager and navigate to the Sound Card. If it's not already gone, uninstall the drivers here as well.
3) At this point hopfully all the drivers are gone. Turn off the system and pull out the card from your system.
4) Do you have Windows XP SP2 installed? If not, install it now.
4a) If SP2 is already installed, go ahead and power on the system without the card installed. Boot up fully the power off again.
5) Once Sp2 is installed or once Step 4a above is completed, turn off the box and put the card back in.
6) Power on the box and see if Windows detects the card. Hopefully it will find it and you will be back in business.
7) If your still having problems, you might try to uninstall the drivers that Windows Installed upon detecting the card (Step 2 above) and then run the installer from Creative again. I found the link here

That being said, they are showing the driver as End of Life.... so that might not even be the right driver. Give the above a shot and keep me updated. I'll look around for those CD's

[Twistan]

Hah, I discovered what it was that was causing the problem.
My Windows Audio system service was actually disabled. I was able to rig some of my own drivers together but it still wasn't working. Silly me, I'm not sure what would even cause that service to be disabled. it's very strange.

Thanks for the help.

[MrGroove]

Wow, that is really bizarre! Never saw that one before so thanks for the FYI. I appreciate the follow-up!