Here are my machine specs:
Motherboard: Intel DG35EC
Processor: Intel E8400
Graphic Card: evga Geforce 8800GTS
Sound Card Xi-Fi Fatality
OS: Windows XP SP2

The Problem:
After installing the drivers and rebooting everything worked fine. I heard
perfect surround sound. The next time I rebooted, however, there was no
sound. I went to the device manager and saw a yellow circle on the Xi-Fi
Drivers.

I rebooted again, there was still no sound, but the Xi-Fi Drivers had no
yellow circle this time.

A third reboot produced a loud static noise from the speakers.

Forth reboot everything worked fine.

These four symptoms happen randomly, each time I reboot I get one of the
above results. I have tried this with the newest drivers and the original
drivers from the CD. Both produce the same problem. I tried to format C: and
do a fresh install and that didn't help either. I also tried disabling the
on-board sound, both in the bios and in the device manager. That didn't
resolve anything.

I am suspecting that one of my hardware is conflicting with the Xi-Fi, but I
am not sure how to solve it. I even brought the computer to technician who
worked on it for a couple of days and haven't been able to solve it.

I would really appreciate any help and/or advice that anyone can offer, this
is very frustrating.

have you tried updating to windows sp3? i doubt that it would fix you problem but it might. also have you done a bios update? that might help too.

Creative drivers suck...hmm...try moving it to a different pci slot and see if that helps, sometimes it will make it reinstall properly. Hade a network card that hated a certain slot once and I was told to move it, thought, "right, a slot is a slot."

...ended up moving the card and it worked fine, wth ?!

you get +6 on your avatar ! Don Knotts rules !

LOL thanks

When you get the yellow exclamation under drivers, have you looked to see what the error message is? Some advice would be that despite being in the golden age of plug and play, sometimes you will still get two devices that do not like share IRQ's. Sometimes in the explanation it may tell you which device is in conflict. You may then manually assign either your audio card or your other device a static IRQ in the bios. This is a disappearing art as most new Techs have not had to deal with much.

Just a possibility for your continuing problems providing your drivers are cosher which it sounds like they are or they just wouldn't work once and not the second time. Bad drivers will just not work...., always.

Thanks for the replies guys.

I've updated to SP3 and tried a different slot. Same deal.

I'll have to check where the error is coming from. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with my graphics card. I'm thinking of just getting a new card and returning the Xi-Fi. It's too much of a headache to deal with.

Does anyone have any recommendations?

My internet has been off for a few days (when it rains it pours).

Anyway I switched on the the FRONT PANEL HD SOUND in the bios and it worked like a charm for a while. I rebooted a couple of times and then it stopped working again.

In the device manager I get the following message "Device not detected (code 10)"

I went to look at other cards, but can't afford one at the moment, does anyone have any advice? More specifically, how do I change IRQs?

OK, so I ended up putting in my old Audigy2 in there and everything works fine.

That Xi-Fi was like a disease, I couldn't even uninstall it properly. I had to format C just to get it off my system.

The cause of this was actually a conflict between the Xi-Fi drivers and the Nvidia Drivers. I'll wait to see if new drivers come out before I re-install the Xi Fi.

THANK YOU everyone for the help and advice.