[SOLVED] SB Live drivers enabled but not started..

Have you disabled the on-board audio adapter in your BIOS? If not, there may be a system conflict between the SBLive and the on-board adapter.

Forgot to mention that.

YES the on board audio is disabled. That was the first thing I did. There are also NO IRQ conflicts with other devices. No errors of any kind.

Scott

Are you sure that the SBLive works?

BTW, removing the /fastdetect switch will not have a negative impact on your boot sequence. If it makes a difference, however, I will be surprised.

BTW, I am sending you a PM. Stand by.

I am sure the SB card works. I can play files using the "Creative Play Center" software. So I know the card works. I just get no Windows sounds. (Start-up, close windows, New Mail notification Etc.)

I will post a few screen shots of what my Sounds windows look like.

Thanks for your offer Colgeek.

Scott

Are you running SP3 and fully up to date? Also, is your SBLive the default playback device in Control Panel/Sound?

OK. Here are the screen shots.

Under sound playback, default device, ONLY get that "modem" driver. Nothing else. I disabled the modem and it went away, but it would not give my any other devices.








I don't really know if making that change to the BOOT.INI would work, but anythings possible?

Scott

The sound playback selection seems to be incorrect. What options do you have?

No other options in ANY of the drop down menus. I also deactivated the modem, and got NO options (NO SBLive card or anything.) in any of those drop-down menus. It just gives me a greyed out "No MIDI playback device available" in the box.

Oh another thing. I also removed the modem card. Still did not give me any audio driver in the menu. I also switched the cards to other slots. Nothing worked.

Which is why I wondered about trying the /fastdetect option mentioned above.

Scott

Go ahead and give it a shot to see what happens. BTW, does your on-board sound work properly if enabled in the BIOS?

Funny you should mention that. I also tried the on-board (After activating it in the BIOS). No sound. I surely thought that the on-board would work. But nothing. So I deactivated it and went back to troubleshooting the SBLive card drivers.

Scott

I strongly suspect that you have something in your registry that is causing this conflict. You can always reload WinXP from scratch or attempt to manually dissect your registry to find the offending config.

Ok, tried to remove the /fast detect switch. Did not work. Still no sound.

Back to square one.

I read some where that there is the possibility that I am missing the driver for the Hi Def Audio controller so Windows can't detect any audio devices?

I will have to look into this, but I don't know where to look. Is there a file name for the HD Audio controller in Windows XP?

Scott

When you install the drivers from Creative, the needed files are installed. You don't need a separate HD Audio controller driver.

You do have the most current driver from Creative, right? BTW, what specific SB Live! do you have?

http://support.creative.com/Products/product_list.aspx?...

I have tried re-installing the drivers from the CD three times. I don't think a updated driver will help any. The card is more than 5 years old. Maybe I will try the new driver and see what happens. Couldn't hurt... Lets hope.

To be continued...

Scott

Using the CD may be the very problem you are chasing. Updates, when provided, take into account changes in the OS. An updated driver from Creative may solve the whole matter.

Go to the link provided earlier and find the current version for your sound card. Seriously, it could make all of the needed difference.

Good luck!

Well, OK. I will try it later today and post back with any problems.

Keep your fingers (and toes) crossed that this works..


To be continued..

Scott

Ok. Here is what I did...

1. Downloaded and installed the newest drivers for the SBLive card. NOTHING.

2. Downloaded the newest drivers for my on-board sound (enabled). NOTHING.

3. Removed the sound card from it's slot and put it in another. NOTHING.

4. Removed the modem and put it in another slot. NOTHING.

At this point I may have to go through the registry and see if there is anything there that looks amiss. The problem is I don't know what to look for.

In my sounds/audio properties/sound devices box it says MODEM #2 LINE PLAYBACK. It says this for all the other drop-down boxes as well. (See page 1 of this post) I wonder if this is the problem. Although the changing/moving the modem has no affect.

I'm thinking there must be a bad entry in the registry that is causing this problem. That's the only place to look now.

So what am I looking for? Perhaps MODEM #2 LINE PLAYBACK?

Scott

Yes, look for any modem entries and delete them. Also, I suggest a full uninstall of all SB drivers. Use DriverSweeper to remove the drivers. Also use CCleaner to remove any orphaned entries in your registry.

Once clean, try a "fresh" install of the most current drivers. Good luck!

P.S. You can always reload Windows as a last resort....

OK. I went looking in the registry and found this for starters.



Notice the two entries, PLAYBACK and RECORD in the right window. These entries probably are the two menu options on this screen:



Don't know if this helps any, but it seems a start in the right direction. I think if I change PLAYER and RECORD to the name of my SBLive sound card, it will change these two menu options. However, I don't think it will help me with the problem. of "seeing" the SBLive audio device.

I will go back into the registry and look for any SBLive entries to see if there are any problems on that front.

I will post any screen shots of my progress when I can.

To be continued...

Scott

P.S.
YES I know that messing around in the registry can have disastrous consequences. That is why I have made a back-up copy of my registry.

Here are a few more "Modem #2 line playback" entries.







Still digging through the registry..

To be continued...

Scott

OK. Here's the latest..

I was looking in the System Info screen and found these listings (highlighted) for my sound card drivers:



It seems that the SB drivers are not started?? I have no idea how to start them. There is nothing in services that I can see that would start them. Reinstalling them does nothing.

Also, what about the last highlighted item (Universal Audio Adapter is not started either)?

How am I supposed to "start" the drivers when there is no where to do that? That should have automatically been done when they were loaded.

Any ideas at this stage of the problem?

Scott

Do you have any services disabled via MSCONFIG?

I'm looking in services now and I don't really know what service would "start" the UAA or the Creative sound card drivers.

I will try and post a few screen shots of the services that are "not started". Maybe by looking at the list we can get some ideas.

To be continued...

Scott

OK. Here are the screen shots of the services that are NOT started:




Scott

PROBLEM SOLVED!!!!      

OK. I found what the problem was. Here is how I fixed it:

____________________________________________

I had everything ok in Device Manager and every driver was running that should, but the symptom was that there was no sound coming out from the sound card. Everything was OK in the Device Manager, but in the Sounds and Audio Devices Control Panel there was only the Voice recording option on the Voice tab, and the MIDI music playback (without the sound card being in the list) on the Audio tab active. The others like Voice playback, Sound playback, Sound recording and everything on the Volume tab was grayed out.

The steps I took:

1. Create the restore point. *IMPORTANT*

2. On the System Properties panel, Advanced tab, Environment Variables button, under the User variables click New and create a variable named devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices with the value of 1.

3. Open the Device Manager and select Show hidden devices from the View menu.

4. Under the Sound, video and game controllers group, find your sound card(s) and
disable it/them (don’t need to uninstall).

5. Then uninstall the following devices: (These devices were grayed out in the list as non-present and not working)
- Microsoft Kernel Audio Splitter
- Microsoft Kernel System Audio Device
- Microsoft Kernel Wave Audio Mixer
- Microsoft WINMM WDM Audio Compatibility Driver

6. Select Scan for hardware changes from the Action menu. Now the system should re-detect and reinstall the deleted devices automatically. You may get non signed driver warnings, click continue.

7. Enable the devices you disabled in step 4. You may need to restart the computer.

The problem should be disappeared, you should be able to play sounds.
____________________________________________________

What a relief to have my sound back. Those four Kernal/WINMM WDM drivers above were the problem. They, somehow, where not working. Don't know how it happened.

I want to thank COLGEEK for his suggestions and helping me out these past few weeks.

Scott

You did good! WOO HOO!!!

@ vomacka

YOU ARE A GENIUS!

I've been working on the very same audio problem for 3 days man, and you just made my entire week!!!

Thank you!

Help! I've got pretty much the same problem. The sound card drivers are loaded, but the apps can't get to the sound card. The complain about the mixer not running.

Control Panel/System/Hardware/Device Manager/Sound, Video and Game Controllers. I double click SoundMax Integrated Digital Audio. It says "This device is working properly", and it is enabled. If I click the Properties tab in here, expand the "Mixer Devices", double click on the "SoundMax Integrated Digital Audio", I get "Status: Driver is enabled but has not been started". "Use mixer features on this device" is selected. That explains my apps complaining about the mixer.

I tried following the steps above. You lost me at:

Uninstall the following devices: (These devices were grayed out in the list as non-present and not working)
- Microsoft Kernel Audio Splitter
- Microsoft Kernel System Audio Device
- Microsoft Kernel Wave Audio Mixer
- Microsoft WINMM WDM Audio Compatibility Driver

Mine may have different names given that it's a different audio chipset. Where do you find these?

So I think what the question is, is what is supposed to start the mixer (among other things)? I don't even have a volume control on the tool bar, and when I try to launch it from menus I get "There are no active mixer devices available". Obviously it is there, it just hasn't been started.

Thanks,
Marty

Hi Marty..

This solution is only for XP SP3. I don't have these sound kernel drivers on my Win 7 system.

If you did step 2 correctly, it should give you a number of Microsoft drivers in the Sound, video and game controllers group. That is when you will see the hidden Microsoft drivers.

When you do see those drivers, then you have to right click on each one and click on uninstall. Then follow the rest of the steps above.

Just remember this is for XP. The Microsoft sound drivers are different in Win 7

Scott