Big Issue - Windows 7 can't detect any sound cards

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MurderCityDevil

Gawd
Joined
Dec 6, 2007
Messages
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Okay here's the scenario. Up till yesterday my computer was running W7 with no problems, using a Creative XtremeGamer PCI sound card. Last night I installed Snow Leopard on my secondary drive and quickly found out that my sound card didn't work with OS X. I did some thinking and remembered that my mobo (Maximus formula), came packaged with some crappy sound card, the Supreme FX II. I looked up the audio chip and found that it had been reported to work with OS X. My plan was to have both soundcards installed in my system, but only have one being used at a time - XtremeGamer when using Windows, SupremeFX when using SL.

The problem is that when I put the SupremeFX in my system alongside the Creative and booted W7 to check if it worked, Windows went apeshit and stopped detecting any audio device whatsoever. The first time I booted with both cards, it didn't recognize the SupremeFX. I loaded up device manager and clicked scan for hardware changes and my system locked up. I restarted and after that it doesn't recognize either one of the cards. I've tried both together, both individually, and W7 doesn't find anything. Obviously this is unacceptable. I'm not even concerned right now with getting both to work, I just want at the very least, to have my XtremeGamer functional again. How can I get W7 to recognize it (please don't say reformat, I don't have a current backup and would lose a lot of data) and get things back to the way they were? Please help!

Thank you in advance!
 
W7 should still have a repair install...if you failed at dual-boot, this may be the solution.
 
Maybe your bios got all jacked up because there were 2 sound cards in the system. I would check the bios and see if maybe something was disabled or something?
 
System restore to yesterday and see if that gets your Xtremegamer card working again. Should be relatively painless.

Then you can try experimenting with both cards again, knowing that you have a fallback option if your system screws up again.
 
Thanks for the feedback guys. The problem is that system restore, AFAIK, is disabled on my install. I turned it off because it takes up too much damn space, and just rely on manual backups, which has never been an issue. The thing is that my last backup was quite a while ago and I've done a lot of stuff in the past few days (customizations, new apps, etc) and would hate to lose it.

As far as the BIOS goes, there's an option there for "High definition audio". I will try disabling this and see if it makes any difference. Also, is there any way to remove all references to sound cards in the registry so that it starts off fresh? Would a registry cleaning tool help with this? I just find it weird that it doesn't detect ANYTHING. I don't think I've ever seen windows get new hardware and just completely fail to recognize that it's there, never mind whether or not it has drivers installed or not.
 
Good thing the thing I recommended isn't System Restore then, isn't it?

  1. Put Windows disk in drive
  2. Boot computer
  3. Look for option called "Repair Install"
  4. Take and call me in the morning (or not)
 
Try the repair option. If that doesn't work, go to device manager and remove the sound drivers and reboot. If nothing happens and it doesn't autodect, just download and install the latest relevant creative drivers. Or if you're in a hurry, just do the last step and install the creative drivers - don't worry about autodetect or scanning for hardware changes - you know what hardware you have anyway.
 
echn111 said:
Try the repair option. If that doesn't work, go to device manager and remove the sound drivers and reboot. If nothing happens and it doesn't autodect, just download and install the latest relevant creative drivers. Or if you're in a hurry, just do the last step and install the creative drivers - don't worry about autodetect or scanning for hardware changes - you know what hardware you have anyway.
Click to expand...

I will try the repair option with no sound card present in the computer...hopefully that clears out the registry entries or whatever. The problem with drivers is that I can't reinstall them...it says no hardware present and the installer doesn't continue. Same thing with trying to "update driver for this device" in device manager - it doesn't exist. Will report back as soon as I get home. Thanks again for the help.
 
A repair install like ashmedai said is probably your best bet at this point.

One point to consider in the future. Turn System Restore back on and run Disk Cleanup occasionally and clean up your old restore points.

There are COUNTLESS posts in these forums with stories like your's that could be corrected in a few minutes with System Restore and yet people with lots of skill LOVE to turn this feature off to save about $1 worth of disk space.

Sorry for the rant. It's just that System Restore is a super cool system utility that if needed just ONCE can save a lot of time and I think turning it off makes little sense.
 
Well, system restore or not, I was able to at least make the Xtremegamer functional again. After a lot of fucking around, I got Windows to recognize it and everything is back up to speed, thank god. Throughout all this, I wasn't able to get W7 to recognize the SupremeFX card for the life of me. I've given up on it since it didn't work in Snow Leopard either, which is the only reason I even bothered with it. I am going to try buying a sound card that has been proven to work out of the box, the X-Fi Go! (usb sound card which supposedly does not need drivers) and now the issue is whether or not they can both live happily together in W7. Thanks guys for your help...by the way, I'm making a W7 backup as we speak :D
 
Success! Both sound cards work right out of the box. W7 had no issues with it, no conflicts with the xtremegamer, able to switch outputs fine in winamp, set primary device, etc. SL booted up with full sound support as well :D not even a need for applehda.kext. Thanks again everyone for the help, I think 50 bucks is worth it for a now fully-working dual boot with all features.
 
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