soundblaster audigy 2 zs

[Londoner]

hi,

I bought this card recently and have plugged it into my gigabyte motherboard - can someone be so kind as to talk me through how I get it to actually work, please?

update:

I have the card plugged in to my board, there are sockets along one side but i have no leads or anything to plug into them - is something missing do you think? Does it need a power lead perhaps?

I went to http://www.softwarepatch.com/utilities/audigyzs.html and downloaded the drivers (I have tried both 1SBA2_EAX4DRV_031031 and SBA2_PCWDRV_LB_1_84_55-R1 installations) for the card but whenever I try to install a driver it says 'error - could not detect' the card on my system and that I must ensure I have the card installed first - but it is. I think.

Thanks for reading.

[TwoRails]

Did you diable any onboard sound and uninstall any of it's software before installing the new card?

[Londoner]

Did you diable any onboard sound and uninstall any of it's software before installing the new card?

No.

The current sound card is, I think, integral to the motherboard so cannot be detached - how would I bypass it?

Thank you for your reply.

[blue60007]

You would need to look around in BIOS. When you start up the computer you usually see a Gigabyte logo? Or a screen that starts listing system information. When you see that, you'll probably need to hit Delete. If that doesn't do it, look around in your manual, or on that screen and it should tell you what key to hit. You'll see something like "Press Del to enter Setup". Then hopefully you'll get into a menu that you can use the keyboard to navigate. You'll just have to look around for the option we are looking for. It might be under "Integrated Peripherals" or "Onboard Devices" or something like that. Not sure what type of audio that motherboard has, but the option for mine is "AC97 Audio". You should be able to press enter on it, and change it to Disabled. Now Escape back to the main menu, and select Save Changes and Exit.

Once you are back in windows, you'll want to go into "Add Remove Programs" from the Control Panel and unistall anything for the onboard sound. For example, I have "Realtek AC'97 Audio", you'll have that, or whatever sound chipset you have on the motherboard. You need to uninstall that. Now restart, and then you'll want to run the CD that came with the card (or what you downloaded) and you should be able to install drivers from there. (Ignore any attempts from windows to install it for you. ie, the New Hardware Wizard)

[Londoner]

Thank you for your reply.

Ok. I have done all that; I went into BIOS and the sound device was set to 'auto' so I set it to 'disable'. I went into - my computer / properties / device manager and uninstalled drivers then went into - control panels / add-remove and removed the sound drivers from there. I have restarted my computer and Windows recognises that a new multimedia sound device hardware has been added but when I run the drivers that I got from Creative Soundblaster they still display the error message and say that no soundblaster device is attached.

Any further suggestions would be much appreciated.

Edit:

Ok, through the control panel - add/remove I was able to add a couple of drivers for the sound card, although some drivers still say there is no creative soundblaster card installed - and all the drivers are from the creative site. Thing is, there's still no sound. My sound device is plugged into the correct card and it works fine with the motherboard's sound card so its not the speakers. There is some 'interference' coming through the speakers if i turn up the volume but i guess tahts natural. When I run a system check at pcpitstop it recognises that I have this sound card installed and I just did the system tests through device manager / sounds and audio devices properties and it seems to think everything is working ok. But its not. Interesting, but maybe insignificant, is that I ran the dxdiag sound test with the volume way up and when the test is supposed to be playing the volume of the interference actually goes down.

Any thoughts, help, guidance, is much appreciated.

[Londoner]

Any further suggestions would be much appreciated; the problem continues.
Thanks for reading.

[TwoRails]

Pull the Audigy. Remove all / any software / drivers associated with it (and double check and do the same for onboard sound). Reboot, make sure everything else works OK. Re-install the card, but in a different slot, far away from your vid card slot. Install the drivers and software from the original CD. If you still have problems, you may have to repeat the process, but go to Creative's site for instructions on manually, completely removing the drivers and such. If you are still having problems, then see if you can pop the sound card into a friends box to see if it works there.

[Hi Ho]

Audigy cards and drivers are very picky. You need the exact drivers for your card, nothing else. If your card is OEM you must use the drivers on the CD that came with it.