Soundblaster problem, please help

[Magjam 0]

Hello

 

Recently my Soundblaster Live 5.1 card suddenly stopped playing mp3's or any sound at all.

 

I have Windows XP, Viav KT400 Motherboard, Athlon XP2200, Geforce 4 Ti4200, Soundblaster Live 5.1

 

When I try to go to creative's mixer or speaker settings I only get "mixer not found..."

 

The device manager shows that the card is installed and working properly..

 

I have tried to reinstall drivers, replaced the drivers, placed the soundcard in another PCI slot. Even bought a new one, but still the same problem...

 

I have disabled the AC97 onboard sound in BIOS as well, so that should not be a conflict

 

I have even removed the soundcard, installed drivers for the AC97, and same thing there, it finds it, installs it, everything looks good, bit I cannot play any mp3 or get any sounds. The only thing I can get sound from is Teamspeak2.

 

Someone with any clue as to what has happened, and what to do please reply

 

Magjam

[Shakedown 0]

A while back I had lost all ability to use the mixer. After a little hunting I found the following:

 

There is a diag utility that gets installed with the software.

 

Start / Programs / Creative / Sound Blaster Live! / Creative Diagnostics

 

You are able to repair broken items after running diag.

 

Fixed my problem, may fix yours.

[el_vago32 0]

Check out if the Windows Audio service is set to start automatic.

 

Star=>run=>services.msc, there you have the list of services.

[Magjam 0]

Thank you el_vago

 

The tip you gave me have helped me along the way somewhat, alltough I am too inexperienced with the use of this services.msc

 

I found windows audio, it is set to automatic, but it says " service status stopped" When i press start service, I get this message "Could not start the Windows audio service on Local Computer. Error 127 the specified procedure could not be found"

 

Any more tips?

 

Magjm

[el_vago32 0]

haven't found anything yet in MS knowledge base, but, try to install updated drivers if you haven't, and check the "event viewer" out, there maybe some useful info.

[jwl812 0]

I recently installed a new KT400 mb and I am now having SB Live! 5.1 problems also. I havent lost sound completely but my mp3s are now popping and hissingand screaching very badly. I hope to do some research tonight and if I find anything out I will let you know.

It must be the VIA KT400 chipset and the SB Live! chipset conflicting.

[jmmijo 1]

Hasn't there been some issues with noise related to the PCI bus and VIA chipsets in the past ?!?

 

It seems to me I read/heard about this and I couldn't remember if there was ever a fix or what ;(

 

Since I've not actually had this problem before I can't really add any tips on what to look for but I would first check and make sure that you're running the latest VIA 4in1 service packs but only if you're running Win 2K or XP as VIA claims that they've been tweaked only for those OS's. For Win 9x you should only use up to v4.45 I do believe

[jwl812 0]

Well I did ALOT of research last night and it doesnt appear to be good news.

 

It seems VIA's chipsets and the Digital Signal Processors on the Live! and Audigy sound cards don't like to play nice nice.

 

There are apparently PCI timing issues between the two chipsets. I found 2 fixes. One is a PCI latency timing patch. This one comes with too many disclaimers of possible system problems above and far beyond noisy, scratchy sound.

The other, which I tried and seems to be working just fine, is a SOUNDBLASTER LIVE! patch. THe patch is called 'creative_patch_v0010.exe' . This patch according to what I have read seems to be less intrusive to the system and, so far, is working just fine. It removes a command within the LIVE!DRIVE driver called TURBO MODE. By turning off TURBO the PCI timing is greatly improved. I have really put my system thru the ringer and so far no problems, not even a hick-up.

You can probably do a search for it, but I can email it to anyone that needs it. Its only about 64k.

 

Hope this helps.