Here's my problem:
I have an AMD Athlon Thunderbird 750 Mhz, 256 SDRAM, SoundBlaster Live! Value,GeForce 2MX/MX 400(Microstar Starforce 8817, QDI Kinetiz 7T(VIA based)mainboard, which has an sound card on board, this may be important.Ever since I've installed Soundblaster, my system started locking up mostly in every game i was playing, and even in web pages requirin Flash 5.I've formated the harddrives at lest 8 times in a week, but when I reinstalled Windows 98 first edition, the same thing happened. Then, I tried Windows Me, again the same. I don't have to mention here that the mainboard sound device is disabled and no IRQ or DMA conflicts seem to appear. I've checked this a thousand times and I started to get sick of all this.One more thing, I have the latest drivers for my videocard, soundcard and VIA 4-in-1. Everything seemes to work fine, but it is not the case, my system loccking up whenever he feels to.
Please help me, I' m in a desperate situation!
Thanx alot
Mike

I've seen a lot of Posts on other boards about the SB live 5.1 Not working correctly with the Via based Mother boards and the Geforce combo.
I don't know if it is limited to this combo Or If it just doesn't like the Via chipset.

In almost every case they suggest using the Windows Native drivers for the SB.
In a few cases they even use another slot for the card.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

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To ERR is HUMAN
To REALLY screw things UP, YOU NEED a COMPUTER !

Thank you very much for your answer, Rick!
I' ve tried moving the sound card to another slot one week ago, but the problem remained the same.Yeah, I didn't think about leaving it's original Windows drivers. By the way, when installing Live!ware 2.0 (3.0 is junk)the wizard tells me about keeping or replacing some windows files, but either way, the computer acts the same.Tell me, please, by leaving the original windows drivers, I will be still able to install surround mixer, creative recorder and the other features, because I really need them?

Thank you very much for your answer, Rick!
I' ve tried moving the sound card to another slot one week ago, but the problem remained the same.Yeah, I didn't think about leaving it's original Windows drivers. By the way, when installing Live!ware 2.0 (3.0 is junk)the wizard tells me about keeping or replacing some windows files, but either way, the computer acts the same.Tell me, please, by leaving the original windows drivers, I will be still able to install surround mixer, creative recorder and the other features, because I really need them?

You MUST install the Mixer.
That Much I know for sure. If you don't the volume control won't show up on the screen and or work.

The other features I'm not sure about.
I have the SB Live 5.1 and only had to install the updates from SB web site to cure my errors

I did remove/uninstall all of the Old files before installing the new files

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To ERR is HUMAN
To REALLY screw things UP, YOU NEED a COMPUTER !

Hey,

When you say you disabled the onboard sound, how did you do that? Did you disable it both in BIOS and Device Manager?

In Device Manager, what components are showing up for soundcards? Are the onboard components still showing up?

The reason I ask, is I just recently installed a SB PCI512 card in a system that has onboard sound. I not only had to disable the onboard sound in BIOS, but also in Device Manager, for every onboard sound component listed, I had to go into Properties and check the "Disable in this Profile", or something like that.

From what you describe, it sounds like the card and the onboard sound are still fighting each other. Or it could be the incompatibility of the SB and the VIA as suggested above. It's good that you don't have IRQ or DMA conflicts, but there may be ghost drivers for the onboard sound that need to be removed. You may have to boot up in Safe Mode to find out if there are any ghost drivers for the onboard sound and delete them.

Post back with the procedure you used for disabling the onboard sound and the components that show up in Device Manager.

Cheers,

Big Blue 66


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Woe is me.

Thanx both of you guys!
First thing first: yes I' ve disabled the onboard card both from bios and device manager, and I entered safe mode and removed the ghosts from there. In the Device Manager at sound, video and game controllers there are only SBLive! Value and Wave Device for Modem.The only strange thing to me is that when checking DMA assignments SBLive!Value appears twice.Odd, isn't it? It looks like this:01 Creative SBLive Emulation
02 Standard Floppy Disk Controller
04 Direct Memory Access Controller
05 Creative SBLive Emulation
Second:Rick, what do you mean by "updates"?
Checking several times in the past weeks Creative's webpage, the only update I've noticed was that junk LiveWare 3.0, nothing else. Maybe I don't know what to look for, be more specific, please!
Thanx again, boys for your support!

Hey,

I don't think the multiple DMA listings are a problem here. Every SoundBlaster card I ever had did that. Don't know why.

I think your next step is to research the compatibility issues of the Live card with your hardware.

Or, you might consider returning the Live card in exchange for the PCI512 card.

Good luck.

Big Blue 66


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Woe is me.