Is This a Driver Problem

Hello all, I desperately need some help regarding a sound problem.

Within the past 2 weeks, I have had problems with my sound on my pc. To me my problem seems a bit weird so please do hope you bear with me while I am explaining the difficulties I am encountering.

My Sound card is a Creative Labs SoundBlaster Audigy Platinum, a couple of weeks ago I checked for software updates via the autoupdate on Creative Labs website the download seemed to be going ok till the install started where it failed to initialize, so I found where it had been installed and initialized the setup, it seemed to go ok, and went on my merry way back to playing games. However the next day I was told my machine had found new hardware, this being my sound card, on top of that the drivers would no longer recognize that I even had a sound card installed, I managed to cure this via System restore and was grateful when it seemed fixed, however within the past 3 days my sound problem is back, while at time I can get sound from my soundcard ,creative labs diagnostics tells me I have no sound card installed and at times I will get no option on the volume, the card has been removed and re-put back in the pc, when that didn’t work, the sound card was taken out of one PCI slot and put in to a spare one, still it does this problem, also at times I have sound but if I have a system crash or a restart the sound will reset itself back to saying I have no soundcard, I have had the sound card tested and the hardware seems okay, so can it be the drivers somehow, have the drivers gone corrupt, though I have tried on several attempt to reinstall the drivers and all I get back is a notice saying it cannot find any compatible hardware on the pc.

What makes matters worse is that I cannot uninstall the drivers I have as due to a technical problem the Control Panel>Add/remove programs doesn’t display properly and preventing me from uninstalling any files from 1yr and a half ago, the only way I can think of hopefully correcting the problem is seeing if I can delete the entire creative labs folder in program files and see if it will let me do a fresh driver install, though would this work and correct my problem. Also would this replace the drivers of creative labs in the windows/system32/drivers folder?


I have done a Belarc Analysis in case it would help anyone solves my problem;


OS
Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (build 2600)

Motherboard
Board: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. P4C800-E Rev 1.xx
Bus Clock: 133 megahertz
BIOS: American Megatrends Inc. 1017.004 07/22/2004

Processor
3.07 gigahertz Intel Pentium 4
8 kilobyte primary memory cache
512 kilobyte secondary memory cache


Drives
400.09 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
265.55 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

LITE-ON LTR-48125W [CD-ROM drive]
SAMSUNG DVD-ROM SD-616T [CD-ROM drive]
3.5" format removeable media [Floppy drive]

WDC WD2000JD-00HBB0 [Hard drive] (200.05 GB) -- drive 0
WDC WD2000JD-00HBB0 [Hard drive] (200.05 GB) -- drive 1

Memory
1024 Megabytes Installed Memory

Slot 'DIMM0' has 512 MB (serial number SerNum0)
Slot 'DIMM1' is Empty
Slot 'DIMM2' has 512 MB
Slot 'DIMM3' is Empty

Local Drives
c: (NTFS on drive 0) 200.04 GB 107.58 GB free
f: (NTFS on drive 1) 200.05 GB 157.97 GB free

Display
NVIDIA GeForce 6600 GT [Display adapter]
Mitsubishi DPlus 230SB [Monitor] (19.7"vis, s/n 211200952, October 2002)

Multimedia/Audio
Creative Audigy Audio Processor (WDM)
Creative Game Port

 

Sounds like that driver you downloaded. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

See how you go in the device manager. Make sure you have the original driver handy.

Find you card in "sound" & uninstall it, reboot. The system should then pick it up. Reinstall the driver that works.

 

just a update, I removed the new drivers and installed my old ones.

my sound card is now being dectected and all sound is working as normal, woot

thank you for your help Hipster