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X-Fi Compatibility Issue?

C

Clump

I AM NEVER COMING BACK TO [H]! Waaaaa
Joined
Dec 23, 2004
Messages
139
I have been on a bit of an upgrade tear lately, so when I saw X-Fi Platinum cards on the shelf at the local Best Buy I picked 1 up. My mobo is a MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI, running the 3.6 BIOS. My "old" sound card is an Audigy 2 ZS.

Placing the X-Fi in any of the 3 PCI slots the system will not boot. It goes through POST and when it gets to where Windows should start it reboots. It doesn't matter if the live drive is hooked up or not. I figured it was a bad card and exchanged it. The 2nd 1 does the exact same thing. Back to the Audigy and all is well again.

Can anyone confirm that this card is running on a Neo4, or other NForce 4 board? It may be 2 bad X-Fi's in a row, but that sure seems unlikely and I have depleted Best Buy's supply.

Thanks!
 
Did you remove the Audigy drivers before you tried to install the new card?
 
I'd also make sure you disable any onboard audio. I know I get issues with my audigy2zs if I leave the onboard enabled in the BIOS
 
I cant recall where, but there is a thread in here somewhere where a guy said he had the same problem. He had a modified bios on his board. He removed that bios and flashed it to the most up to date bios and everything was fine. Im pretty sure the thread was in audio somewhere, of course talking about the X-Fi.
 
ok. do this.

1. pull x-fi card
2. boot into bios and disable any motherboard audio device and/or upgrade bios to latest version
2a. boot into safe mode
3. uninstall all remains of your audigy card.
4. run msconfig and check your startup routine and remove anything related to your ZS there
5. restart machine into windows to make sure you didnt leave anything behind
6. shut down machine
7. place your X-Fi into one of your PCI slots
8. boot machine
 
Thanks for the suggestions.

- The Audigy drivers were removed from the start.
- The on board sound is disabled.
- It's running the latest BIOS.

Jester, I ran through your list. It still doesn't boot with the X-Fi installed. Again, it reboots right at the point where the Windows splash screen should start to fade in, so I really don't think it's a driver issue.

Searching for the other thread mentioned......

Thanks again!
 
clump,

could you verify that your system boots up even without the X-fi/other pci cards plugged in?

if so, and i know its a pain just for a sound card, but try resetting the bios before plugging the card back in. so, reset bios, reboot, shut down, plug card in and then boot up again.
 
Yes, it boots with no PCI cards, or with the Audigy card. If by resetting the BIOS you mean load setup defaults I have done that. I did not clear the CMOS, but may try that later.

I found the other thread http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=943635 and I have the unknown PCI device erros shown in the first post. Since flashing to the official BIOS fixed it for him, I'm assuming there is some conflict in the BIOS. I don't think I'm going to try flashing to older BIOS to make this work, but if there was 1 that is sure to work I might give it a try. I guess I'll return the X-Fi card and wait for MSI to update the BIOS.

I'd still like to know if anyone has this working with a MSI K8N Neo4 SLI. Google doesn't find any pertinent threads and the MSI board doesn't have any discussion about it.

THanks again for the great suggestions!
 
Reset CMOS, no joy. Also, I found some information on Creative's forums. Tried the suggestions from there, no joy. I also tried manually assigning the IRQ, no joy.

Thanks for the help, but at this point I'm returning the card tomorrow. Maybe after the next BIOS it will be OK.
 
Why are you so sure this is a BIOS problem and not a Windows problem?

If it was me I would formated and reinstalled Windows two days ago.
 
Im not sure I understand how this could be windows if it boots and runs just fine without the card in place. Maybe its a problem if no SP2 installed, but I dont get the connection.
BTW Clump, I have an ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe board. I got the bug today and got me a brandee new X-Fi xtreme music card at BB. I put mine in and it loaded up with no problem. So to answer the question, it seems to function fine on my NF4 board. I did uninstall all my Creative Audigy 1 stuff and run Drivercleaner3 twice before I loaded the new drivers. Im sorry youre still having problems. :mad:
 
IMO format and reinstall Windows is kinda like cutting your leg off at the hip because you have a broken toe. If I'm going that far I might as well replace the mobo too.

From reading various boards (Creatvie, DFI, here) I have not seen where anybody with this problem had it solved by reinstalling Windows. I'm convinced it's BIOS related because when the X-Fi is installed in any PCI slot I get a bunch of unknown PCI devices. I turned off automatic restart on errors in Windows and it blue screens saying that my BIOS is not ACPI compliant. and says to press F7 during install to bypass ACPI loading.

At this point it's not worth reloading everything (at least to me), even if it was a sure bet to make the X-Fi work.

Thanks again to everybody for the help and I'd still like to know if anybody has 1 working on a MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI, BIOS 3.6. :confused:
 
magoo, did you have to disable the on-board audio on the A8N-SLI?

magoo said:
Im not sure I understand how this could be windows if it boots and runs just fine without the card in place. Maybe its a problem if no SP2 installed, but I dont get the connection.
BTW Clump, I have an ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe board. I got the bug today and got me a brandee new X-Fi xtreme music card at BB. I put mine in and it loaded up with no problem. So to answer the question, it seems to function fine on my NF4 board. I did uninstall all my Creative Audigy 1 stuff and run Drivercleaner3 twice before I loaded the new drivers. Im sorry youre still having problems. :mad:
Click to expand...
 
A quick update:

I reloaded Windows due to the instrallation of an X2 CPU and some minor whacky behavior. It had no effect on this problem.

The strangest thing about this whole issue is that I called Creative tech. support and they went through a few things, then escalated it. They actually called me back with status! Most unexpected.
 
soekev said:
magoo, did you have to disable the on-board audio on the A8N-SLI?
Click to expand...
Yes I disabled the onboard sound before I installed the card, but then again I had an Audigy 1 in the system before, so Ive never used the onboard sound,ever. :D
 
The new 3.7 BIOS fixed it for me. All of the unknown devices disappeared and I was able to load the drivers just fine. :D
 
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