Finding drivers

[flakbait]

I picked up an Audigy SE sound card to get around the lousy on-board sound (P5Q Turbo) chip and ran head-first into a hiccup: drivers. I don't want or need all of the 550mb of garbage Creative packages on the CD, nor will it let me install only the driver. I found a 55mb download that includes a bunch of stuff, half of which I may or may not need; I don't know. What I do know is not having any sound royally blows!

Help would be appreciated most gratefully.



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[Wobbly]

Drivers, or you can download Creative's thingy that looks at your pc and tells you the drivers

[Ghosth]

Well first off unless you choose the "advanced" you never will see those options.

Once you do that, you should get to a point where you can pick and choose what options to install.

[flakbait]

Well first off unless you choose the "advanced" you never will see those options.

Once you do that, you should get to a point where you can pick and choose what options to install.

Ordinarily that's exactly what I would do, Ghosth. However the disc refuses to give me an "Advanced" or "Custom" install option. It wants to install the "Sound Blaster Audigy Suite" and a "Creative MediaSource" widget. No custom, no advanced options. Just two check boxes, an Install button, and a Cancel button. Gotta love Creative! 

I'm downloading a 55mb package off their site which includes a newer driver, EAX 4, and a few annoyances (EAX console, speaker settings, and a Device Control). Not exactly a bare driver install, but a far cry from a lot of the junk the CD wants to drop on my hard drive. The rest of the options are all Vista/Win7 dependent, and I'm on XP Sp3.


Thanks guys!


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[Westy]

This may help and it may not. Had a similar problem with Apple's Itunes.
and using this tip     http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=554&page=2

I could strip it down to what I wanted to install. Maybe you can do the
same with the exe file from Creative?

Good luck

[OOZ662]

If you have a CD with the card, try letting Windows search it out. Open the Device Manager, right click the entry for the sound card, and choose "Update Driver..." and point it to the CD. It ought to pull the INF/SYS/ect files right from the disk and install them for you.

They won't be "up to date" so much as the latest online installer, but only the system drivers will be installed that way.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Creative has one of the most crappy driver supports I've seen. I hate the company.

[flakbait]

If you have a CD with the card, try letting Windows search it out. Open the Device Manager, right click the entry for the sound card, and choose "Update Driver..." and point it to the CD. It ought to pull the INF/SYS/ect files right from the disk and install them for you.

They won't be "up to date" so much as the latest online installer, but only the system drivers will be installed that way.

I ended up doing just that, followed by running the online installer (hot tip: the 55mb pack for Audigy/Live cards isn't WHQL signed!). That generated two blue-screens of death; one while running Quake 4, and another two hours after I uninstalled it. Both times Windoze said it didn't know what caused the unrecoverable error. So I let Windoze update nab the Audigy driver that M$ had, which changed my Audigy card to a Live card in the Device Mangler.

I heard the rumors, I watched the stars align, and I figured I might get lucky by going Creative instead of onboard sound. Especially since this is a new build system (E7500 on a P5Q Turbo, Radeon 4670) and I know Intel-based systems get a little performance boost using a dedicated sound card. But if I get another BSoD I'm ripping the card out, and VIA be damned, I'll use the onboard audio. At least it works.

Now if I could just get my frakkin' Orange Box to install over this dial-up connection...



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[Skuzzy]

It really depends on which Creative card it is.

The Audigy 2 cards were probably the best cards Creative made, as a complete solution.  The SBLive cards were atrocious.  The X-Fi cards seem to be problematic.

Most of all the issues always stem from the Creative utilities which are the worst applications you can install on your computer.

[OOZ662]

Yep, my SB Audigy 2 ZS is a dream, besides not allowing front panel connectors.

[flakbait]

It really depends on which Creative card it is.

The Audigy 2 cards were probably the best cards Creative made, as a complete solution.  The SBLive cards were atrocious.  The X-Fi cards seem to be problematic.

Most of all the issues always stem from the Creative utilities which are the worst applications you can install on your computer.

Audigy SE. Unfortunately the only one Newegg had aside from the X-Fi series and some other uber-expensive audio from Creative. I'm gonna see if I can track down an Audigy 2 ZS card from someone used. Its possible my scrounge might be able to scare one up for a song.

PS: You were right, Skuzzy, this Intel build was the easiest thing yet! Performance is also quite nice 



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