Poor software engineers just finished crafting the final touches on those Vista drivers and Microsoft slaps them in the face with Windows 7 – now they have to fill up this huge drivers pit left by it. Fortunately a lot of Vista drivers work out-of-the-box on Se7en; but some just don’t.
Microsoft saw this coming and this built this great tool called “Program Compatibility” which helps you run applications that were meant to be run on different Windows versions – so this works nicely for all software including drivers.
A huge plus in my opinion was the fact that before I was on my desktop I already had the wireless drivers installed and pretty soon the video ones too. I have a 6720s laptop with pretty much basic stuff as far as chipsets and all that – nothing too complicated.
I will stop here because I will soon write a post about my Windows 7 experience – so let’s continue with how I managed to get a great sound out of my Creative USB Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit sound card on Windows 7.
So when I tried installing the Vista drivers from the CD that came with the sound card it told me that this drivers weren’t compatible with my version of Windows.
So I started the Program Compatibility wizard and pointed it to the setup.exe file from the CD. This also didn’t work because the initial installer launched a separate installer depending on what I wanted to install or leave out from the software package.
So I headed back over to Program Compatibility and pointed the application to setup.exe – this time from \audio\setup folder on the CD. Installed the driver without any problems, restarted the computer. All seemed fine but when I tried to play a song in Winamp I realized the woofer was dead – more than that the system was running in 2 channel mode even though it said 5.1 in the Creative Audio Console.
Next, I launched the Creative Software AutoUpdate application from the Start menu. I downloaded and installed the new drivers with Program Compatibility as indicated above – the path for the downloaded software is c:\Users\All Users\Creative\Software Update\cache\ as the application states.
Same stuff, 2 channel mode but the difference was that this time the Audio Console said 2 channel instead of 5.1. Headed to Creative.com (won’t link to them) and after searching by the classical means you try to find a driver to download from a hardware producer I lost my hope.
In the end I ended up on SoundBlaster.com and there I saw a logo that said “Get the latest beta patch for Windows 7″. Clicked on it, got me to a page where only the header of the site was displayed and under it some VBScript runtime error. Thank god I am a guy that knows how to pull information from sites with such poor navigation and maintenance work.
I ended up clicking on a link which should have pointed me to the download page for that particular file. It pointed me to a page saying “Sorry, your search did not return any results.”. So I copied the file name and Googled it – what every decent minded person would do nowadays. Found the file ready to be downloaded on a weird site written in Chinese – wouldn’t be surprised to be a warez site.
Downloaded the file, this time I didn’t use the Program Compatibility program because theoretically the software was meant to run on Windows 7. So it did as I am writing this post while listing to Crowded House – Don’t Dream It’s Over on my SB Live! powered audio system :)
Here is the troubled driver to download at your convenience.
10 Comments
I'm a proud owner of a SB 24bit USB, and I too managed to download the latest W7 driver. Problem is it seems rather poorly developed, and whenever I stop an audio flow my speaker clicks and hisses. It sometimes happens during a song, doesn't matter whether on youtube or through fb2k. Have you experienced such issues too?
Hello Gabriele. I was just on the point of writing an update for this post. It seems I am experiencing the same issues as you are. I opened a thread on Creative's forums in search for a solution but found none yet. Now I am experiencing a dead subwoofer in some applications (Winamp) but sounds ok on MP11. Even as we speak weird pops are coming out of my speakers.
Here is the thread address: http://is.gd/3DBIH
Be sure that I will notify you if I manage to work it out. Please do so yourself. Thank you.
Thank you very much!
With 7 just installed it worked but with some ranom lacks of sound. I downloaded vista drivers from Creative website and just installed the driver without the whole sw set, but it was the same as before. I tried to install it complete but it was impossible due to compatibility issues.
With this W7 beta river all seems to work fine for now.
I don't konw how the hell manufacturers as Creative offers this lousy support in their web.
Thanks again.
Carlos (Win 7 32b on Vaio Z21WN. Drivers from Vaio for W7 64 doesn't work preety well. Always the same bullshit. )
Window7 it is really fine. I enjoy it!
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Hey, so I've figured out a sort of fix. It doesn't outright stop the problem but its stops the clicking noise 90% of the time for me. I figured I'd post it here in case it works for anyone else.
I'm using a laptop, though I think the fix would still work for a desktop, though I don't see too many people with usb sound cards for their desktops.
But what I did was open up the control panel sound panel. Under the playback tab, I right clicked in open space and clicked show disabled devices. I then disabled the on-board audio (for me it's Conextant and comes up as High Definition Audio Device, but it may/probably will come up as something different for others, e.g. RealTEK or DSD or something like that) so that the only viable playback device was the usb sound card (Sound Blaster live! 24-bit External) (the first step isn't entirely necessary, it just makes it easier to re-enable the on-board audio.
Hope it helps!
Hello I am as well the owner of USB Soundblaster which runs on laptop Asus-C90S. I have the same problem “clicking noise”. I suppose that we all who visit this site have this problem. I haven't found a way to fix this but tried many things. I suppose that we have to wait till guys from sounblaster will wake up and release new drivers :] …
thank you … I was having problems with my instalation cd drivers for Sound Blaster Live! 24-bit External. This driver works fine!!!
Good luck
by diez'
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Daniel_K – Creative King – Rate him wit all ***** =
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Afta 10 evenins of 10 days googlin da intanet
AT LAST, I FOUND da COMPLETE AUDIO DRIVER fo
all you eva needed creative Sound Blaster
Audigy and Live! series..
+ EVeN ANY OTHER models of his great work!!
Find and downld da drivers by yourself and don't
forget to read..
Also fo MP3 playbak wit ALL 5.1 Speakers in Winamp
set 'Enable Speaker Fill' under Audio Enhancements,
Speakers Properties of Windows.
Here are the link wot I found,
Sound Blaster Index
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http://nomoregoatsoup.wordpress.com/model-index/
Driver Pages
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http://nomoregoatsoup.wordpress.com/
http://www.downloadatoz.com/driver/item_creativ...
http://www.driversdown.com/drivers.asp?ID=11529...
http://www.opendrivers.com/driver/293048/creati...
http://www.driversdown.com/drivers/Creative-Sou...
http://www.driverbonus.com/driver/37927/Creativ...
http://nomoregoatsoup.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/...
http://www.opendrivers.com/categorycompany/17/1...
Daniel_K
________
Creative Labs Stock Price as a result of Daniel_K
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http://it.megocollector.com/?p=270
Creative Labs, Phil O'Shaughnessy attacks Daniel_K for modding drivers
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http://it.megocollector.com/?p=254
http://nomoregoatsoup.wordpress.com/
http://twitter.com/daniel_k
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2008/04/daniel_k...
http://forums.creative.com/t5/forums/searchpage...