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X-Fi Dead ?

W

wolf2009

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jan 23, 2008
Messages
1,767
Installed Win 7 RC x64 yesterday. Installed the new X-Fi drivers. everything went fine. restarted the PC and windows says no x-fi detected.



removed the drivers, restarted, BSOD's on startup.





booted in to safe mode cleaned all creative drivers, restart PC and BOOT MGR is missing.



reinstall Win 7 RC x64, and still no X-Fi in Device Manager. Installing drivers says no compatible hardware found.



Using X-Fi Xtreme Music, changed the PCI slot too. that didn't work. still no luck. running out of ideas here.


UPDATE: putting the damn SOC back in the PCI slot it did not work in and removing the speaker jacks made it get recognized and let the driver install. Makes me wonder what the problem was, maybe having the sub on the carpet , maybe a grounding issue or something ?
 
Last edited:
I have an X-Fi that died similarly a year or 2 back (no crash though nor corruption).

It was working fine then...
I installed Windows on a new drive and the X-Fi was not present in device manager.
Try as hard as I might, different PCI slots, manually installing the drivers, different drivers... I could not get it to function.
I put windows on another drive on another PC and it did the same.
Oddly, going back to the original Windows (I hadnt erased it), it worked fine.
That was the last time it was used so I bought a Prelude.
 
UPDATE: putting the damn SOC back in the PCI slot it did not work in and removing the speaker jacks made it get recognized and let the driver install. Makes me wonder what the problem was, maybe having the sub on the carpet , maybe a grounding issue or something ?
 
Possible.
Check the hifi plugs/connectors to see if any constant AC or DC is present.
My meter does AC, hopefully yours does too.
 
Hopefully you are using analogue or I have just written this for nothing :)

Make sure your hifi equipment is switched on with NO sound playing and is ready to be plugged into your PC but do not connect to the PC.

Stereo wires have 3 connections, gnd, left and right
Gnd is always the outer connection where you connect the black meter probe. The red probe connects to either the middle or the centre connector (the 2 audio channels).
**Be sure to make a good connection and avoid touching any exposed connector with your hand in case something is live**
So, take one audio lead from your equipment and connect the meters red probe to an audio channel, the black probe to the outer/shield.

1) Set the meter to 2V DC and see if it registers anything.
(your meter may have 1V or 5V etc, whichever is the lowest above 1V)
If it shows 0.0V that is fine.
If it shows anything else it isnt fine, including OL or O/L meaning overload (ie more than 2V).
Should you get OL, set the meter for 20V (or higher if necessary) and report the voltage.

2) set the meter for AC if your meter has the feature
Repeat 1) but leave it on AC

Do the same for both channels on each wire and all the wires you use (ie 3 stereo pairs for 5.1).


This will tell you if your hifi is damaged.
 
^^ that's a good explanation, but I'm still lost.

What I got is to check with a multimeter.

My Logitech X-540 has three wires going to the sound card, green, yellow and black. Now what I don't understand is how to apply your method to my setup ?
 
Each one of those wires is a stereo pair, the end that goes into the PC has 3 metal connectors.
The metal connector at the tip is a speaker channel, the one next to it is the other speaker channel, the next one is Gnd.
 
Nenu said:
Each one of those wires is a stereo pair, the end that goes into the PC has 3 metal connectors.
The metal connector at the tip is a speaker channel, the one next to it is the other speaker channel, the next one is Gnd.
Click to expand...

ok got it. so for eg, front wire has left and right speakers as the two front connectors.

what about the center wire ?
 
There are sub/centre and rear left/rear right wires.
Test them all.
 
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