New X-Fi = BSODs, help?

SaViOr-

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Sep 10, 2004
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I posted this in the Gen Hardware forums as well, but haven't received any replies on it for over 3 weeks so figured id try it here.

Recently I purchased a Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional from a member of [H]. Ever since I upgraded to this sound card I have been getting a ton of BSODs and game crashes. What could the cause of the BSODs be? OS is Win 7 Ultimate 64-bit & game that I play most is America's Army 3.

System specs are in sig. I am using the most current drivers for all hardware, and onboard sound is disabled. Prior to getting this card I was using the onboard sound for my mic and an audigy 2 zs for my sounds and never had a problem. I wiped all old audigy and realtek drivers clean before hand.

BSODs that I've been getting are:
PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

I was told by someone that I may have had a corrupt HD so last week I went out and bought a WD Black 1TB drive and did a fresh install of Win 7 Ultimate 64-bit as well as the 2.17.0007 drivers for the sound card and am still getting the PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA BSOD. Haven't seen the other two as of yet.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated. If I can't get this figured out I will be forced to sell the card for something else that works (card worked fine in prev. owners machine so its something on mine). All pc specs are in sig.

Thanks,
SaViOr
 
I've heard that Win7 and Creative's drivers still aren't exactly best friends for some users, but other users report no issues, its a mixed bag it would seem

with the new X-Fi out, you have no problems I'm guessing, so that would lead me to point at the X-Fi as the fault, especially if Creative's drivers played nice with your A2ZS, sounds like the new card is the culprit (drivers or something else)

perhaps try some/all of the following:
- Older version of the drivers
- DanielK modded drivers
- Check through running services and see if theres something silly (some background stuff can cause conflicts with drivers (usually DRM services))
- Try with one of your memory modules removed, or the other
- Step your overclocks back (either all the way to stock or partially)
 
After months of BSODs I finally just pulled my X-fi XtremeGamer and now they have stopped. I thought it was an issue with my overclock but the machine was 100% stable if not gaming. Running the onboard Realtek and I have no problems. It looks like they are still incapable of writing drivers for Windows 7 x64. :(
 
Never had a problem with my X-fi going through XP/Vista/7 64bit and I just use the Creative drivers (2.17). You guys must have some conflicting resources. I would disable any on-board features you're not using such as sound, video, or network devices.
 
I have that exact same card in my system, and as you posted, I've had some major issues with creatives drivers. I have a multiboot set up to where if its a game that is really bad I just set up with XP and therefor I fix the problem. More hassle but its worth it not to hear all that electronic fuzz that comes through with Win7. I think it may be the devotion to the process, when you switch out of a program and then come back in, sometimes the sound will completely "shriek" out and then come back in perfect condition. Not sure exactly what its problem is but I've found that if you revert BACK to the original driver that came with the card, I have no problems (mostly). Strangly the original drivers (vista version) will work on windows 7. When it comes to gaming on Win7 and my audio I'm sadly disappointed, lots of "shrieks" from various games such as : Hawx, Left 4 Dead 2 (only on new server start, minimize out and bring back up and its ok?), Demigod (if Xfire is running, ESPECIALLY with Mic on). I'm just not willing to trade one disaster for another and switch to the new PCI-E card that apparently runs great with win7.
 
As I have seen on the Creative forums they are still having issues with systems with more than 4GB of RAM. As I have 8GB it seems likely to be the problem. It would be nice if they would hire someone to write drivers that knows how.
 
As I have seen on the Creative forums they are still having issues with systems with more than 4GB of RAM. As I have 8GB it seems likely to be the problem. It would be nice if they would hire someone to write drivers that knows how.

Hmm, and if you look above the person that was getting BSODs has 8GB of RAM and the person having no problems has 4GB... :)

That being said, I used my old XtremeMusic with a Q6600/8GB rig and don't recall any problems. Certainly a weird and frustrating issue for those having it.
 
Try to find the beta drivers that have the registry key to turn off the X-RAM. It's made to fix problems in Unreal Engine 3 games. It's on Creative's forums somewhere.

I know Unreal engine games have problems in Vista/7. You can't play any UT2k4 game with hardware sound for example without a ctaud2k.sys BSOD.
 
I know Unreal engine games have problems in Vista/7. You can't play any UT2k4 game with hardware sound for example without a ctaud2k.sys BSOD.

too bad i just got 3 BSODs last night when i was trying to play red orchestra in win 7, good thing i still got win xp in dual boot, but i get the impression that KFand RO run with better framerates in win 7. any solution yet ???
 
Recently I purchased a Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional from a member of [H]. Ever since I upgraded to this sound card I have been getting a ton of BSODs and game crashes.

It's working fine for me right now with Windows 7 x64 with 6GB ram.

However I did have an issue before. This is unrelated to your problem but I thought I'd share it anyway.

Few months back I started using my Creative Xtreme Gamer sound card because it was the only way that I could get sound over a single DVI (SPDIF header) cable to my surround receiver. I was having freezes/blue screens with the Creative sound while Realtek was fine. Anyway... eventually I found out that my problem was that Windows for some reason (perhaps carried over from the Realtek setting) had sound output set to 192hz while the maximum that this sound card supports is 96hz. Dropping it down to 96hz in Windows and Creative's Control Panel fixed the issue.

I would of just used the inbuilt Realtek chipset which actually supports DDL/DTS Connect but EVGA hasn't payed for the license so it's disabled.
 
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