Windows Vista

[Gjohnlue]

Hello,

I know this might seem like a broken record, but I wanted to throw some more information out there to see if anyone else has found a fix for this.

I am running Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit.

My System has:

3.40Mhz Pentium D Processor

Intel D955Xbk Motherboard.  (Intel 955 Chipset)

4 GB of System Memory

Sound Blaster  X-Fi XtremeGamer Fatal1ty Pro Series Sound Card.

ATI Radeon 3870 PCI-E Video Card with 512MB Memory

When using this set up with Windows XP I never had any problems.   When I upgraded to Vista, if I used the Driver Disk for Vista that came with my X-Fi  card, and I didn’t update to any other drivers from the web, I never had any issues as well.

Now I have upgraded to Windows 7 32-bit, and I have no choice but to use the Web Version of the drivers for my Sound Card.

It’s horrible.  Clipping all over the place.  Even if I move a window around a little bit it clips until eventually the sound card locks up.  I can’t scroll in Web Pages unless I want some SERIOUS clipping going on.

I have tried many things. 

First off, I'm using the latest BIOS, and all of the latest drivers for EVERYTHING on my system.  But right now, the only thing I have loaded is the OS and the X-FI drivers.  Nothing else.

• I have tried the standard drivers from Creative Labs Website.   No change.
• I have tried Daniel_K’s latest driver pack.  No Change.
• I have tried the PAX version of the drivers out there.  Again, No change.
• I have tried with 1 GB of Memory.  Then 2GB, then 3GB, then 4GB… No change.
• My motherboard does not have an NVIDIA chipset on it so there is nothing there I can play around with.
• I have even turned of DEP since I seen some say it could interfere.  No change.

It does seem like ANY type of movement on my scree will cause a clipping to happen.  Thats crolling, playing a game, moveing windows.  You name is.  How can you live with that???

So now I decided to go back to Vista for a little while since it is just so unbearable that I can’t do anything with my system.  Now, even with the Software from the Included CD that came with my sound card, the clipping continues.  It’s like the updated drivers changed something on my sound card and now it’s doing it all over the board no matter what OS I work with.  Well, I have not gone back to XP, but I assume it will be fine with that one, but who is willing to go that far back with an OS to get a sound card to work correctly????

I don’t know what else I can do at this point.  I’m about ready to just remove the sound card all together and go with onboard sound.  This would end a 20+ year relationship with Creative Labs that I have had.  I always trusted their cards and up until this latest bumble, they have been great.

I just seems like they are not able to get their sound cards to work with the new OS’s.  I have spent the past two weeks reading article after article telling me to try this or do that, or reload this, or change that, all in the hopes that it stops clipping.  It has not changed one thing for me.

So, after all of that, does anyone else have any ideas???  I’m abut at the end of my run with what

I think I can do at this point.  It just seems like I will have to remove it until they come up with some type of fix for this problem.  But seeing as how this has been going on for some time now, I know not to hold me breath for to long.

Thanks for all help you can offer, I’m totally out of options at this point.

Gjohnlue.

[Gjohnlue]

Wow...

After reading a bit more about some of the problems other people were having I decided to shift my focus a little on something else other then the Sound Card Itself.

Like I said earlier, my Windows Vista install never gave me a problem.  It just always worked for me.  But then again, I didn't get the latest driver is about 3 months for my video card either.

I was reading a bunch of posts about how the nvidia chipset was cauing some serious issues.  Some people actually had issues with the motherboard chipsets, and other has problems with Video chipsets as well.

So with that in mind, I started to look at my video card.   I removed the Windows 7 drivers that it wanted to install when I fisrt logged into Windows 7 for the first time.   And I also have a Windows Vista Driver for my ATI Radeon HD 3780 from about July.

So I threw caution to the wind and decided to remove everything "Beta" from ATI for my video card, and start with the install the way Vista did.  (It didn't have a native driver for it, but Win 7 does)  So back at the "VGA Compatable Driver" I installed my July version of the ATI Radeon Drivers.

No more sound pops, clicks or grunts at all.  Not even a little.  It's completely gone.   When looking at the driver setting, they have changed the look and feel of the drivers a little but they still work in much the same way.  The Vista Drivers installed without an issue on Windows 7 and I didnt notice a speed decrease at all.  Even in games and benchmarks.

So I know this might not be the "Fix" for everyone, but if you are running an ATI card with the SB X-FI Sound Card, try staying away from ATI's "BETA" drivers for a little bit.  RIght now everything is running like I wanted it to run and I could not be happier.

So I guess Newer is not always better...

Just thought I would add this update if someone was running non-nvidia hardware like myself.

Thanks!!! 

[jmacguire]

I think that it is great that you followed up your own issue with what worked for you.  I am curious though about your drivers.  I have run both Vista and Native Windows 7drivers on my system for my ATi Radeon 4850 card and I have been lucky enough to have problems.  Though, I totally empathize with those that have an Nvidia chipset with Creative cards.  I upgraded from XP to vista and I had a mountain of problems.  My Nforce 4 board which I loved would not work with VISTA.  I could not use my ATI Radeon 800 Pro at all, I had to use a Geforce 7600GS.  The amazing thing was, after installing the Geforce my whole system ran great.  So being stupid and too confident, I put my radeon back in.  Bad move.......So finding the right combination is difficult.  I went so far as to buy an SIS based chipset board.  I used an Asrock 939 based board and it worked rock solid under XP, Vista, and Windows 7 but it would not let me see over 4 gigs of memory.  So now I run a Gigabyte 790GX based board with an ATI chipset, and I never, NEVER have a crackle snap pop, etc.  Best $92 I could have spent.  It did take some time and hard choices to find the combination that worked, both before and after..........

[Gjohnlue]

Honestly, it felt like it took me a year to figure it out.

But once I started on the path with the VIDEO drivers, it was a fast find.  I had to go back all the way to the Catalyst 9.1 drivers from like 1/1/2008 until I find the correct combo.  I also wrote to ATI letting them know that.

I basically had a blank copy of Windows 7 on my machine with the latest drivers of both Audio and Video.  Then I took the Audio drivers back one step at a time until it woul work right.   It never did with the Audio Driver roll back.   Then when I started to work with the Video, I started at Catalyst 9.10 and worked my way back until I hit 9.1 and FINALLY it was working wonderful.  It seems that the first driver that I hit the DIDN'T have "Windows 7 Beta" in the title, was the one the made everything happy.

I'm not exactly happy that I have to use an older Vista driver to get everything to work, but hey, I'm an audio nut so that needs to be 100% there or I'm miserable.

But with the combo I have I still have high benchmark speeds so I guess it's not that bad.  I just think ATI needs to work on thei driver a bit more to amke sure it will work with everything.   But what I did find out, is that once I found the correct combo, I put a new hard drive in my machine and did the same thing with Windows Vista, just to be sure, and I got the same results.  Crappy until I hit Catalyst 9.1 and then everything was fine.   So this is a long standing problem now.  I hope ATI can do something.  I mean I went back to Drivers for my Sound card that were about wo years old, and it still did the same thing.  So it HAS to be the ATI portion of the problem that needs to be fixed.  Go figure.

It seems we all need to just play around and see what works just to get this new OS off the ground something.  Hee Hee!

Gjohnlue...