X-Fi Music & Vista probs

[realscot]

Just done an upgrade on the brothers machine and he wanted vista.
Vista prompted me to install the drivers for the x-fi and i clicked cancel and used the latest drivers for vista off the creative web site that i'd already downloaded. It goes through the entire install process then asks to restart computer. Once you do that and reboot it shows no audio device installed, and when you go to device manager it says it caannot start device when you look at the xfi. i've no idea what to try now. It's in a DFI Ultra-D and as far as i can see there are no chipset drivers on DFI's site for vista, although windows update took down a few for the board. if anyone could point me towards a solution thatd be great. The sound was working fine under XP on the old setup.

 

[MeatLoaf]

Its a known issue with the nforce4 chipset. Creative tried to resolve it by making a newwer revision of the card with a black heatsink on. Only other thing to try was updating the bios on the motherboard.

 

[helmutcheese]

The issue was supposed to be fixed by Mobo Bios for the NF4.

The Black Heatsink has absolutely nothing to do with it.

The X-FI card we get in EU are not of the same good silicon and yields as the original Asian cards, this caused the famous snap/crackle/pop (not just tied to X-FI its years old the ZS was bad too).

The silicon runs hotter thats why it has a Heatsink and they said it will not effect anything and hope to get better yields someday.

They finally admited this after lots of pressure and i will try to find the URL's but its long ago.

Got this from cached pages, if you want orginal you need goto the CL forums, its posted by that useless female CAT.




" Based on the high demand we are seeing for the recently launched Sound Blaster X-Fi range of sound cards, we have been working towards increasing supply. Achieving this involves using different techniques and one of these is refining the production process of the X-Fi chip, which in turn results in the chip generating more heat. All chips generate heat and some run very hot, but this is not an issue providing some form of heat dissipation is implemented. We have therefore implemented a heat-sink on all Sound Blaster X-Fi based cards going forwards.
Sound Blaster X-Fi products, with or without a heat-sink, have identical audio quality, performance levels, feature set and reliability.
We are continuing efforts to refine the production process further and may in the future revert to a cooler-running X-Fi chip that does not require a heat-sink.
As always, Creative tests and makes changes throughout the life cycle of a product to ensure that we only ship hardware that is reliable and of the highest quality. "



IMO a Heatsink is a good thing anyhow, I fitted small Vantec one to my ZS as it was at very bottom right on the case floor with a 1"-2" gap.