Just spent another 3 hours approx.
I don't know why I'm so glued to wanting to figure this out, but I think I'm now interested in solving this impossible task... def need help, though.
My next move is a format I think. This is on my spare (secondary) gaming rig that I keep @ my parents house when I visit there. I'm there every other weekend or so (had dinner with family tonight so I'm staying overnight), and I want an X-Fi card to work on this machine (specs in OP).
I have a single 36gb raptor on here, so no partitioning. I also have a file-svr here that I built for my family yrs ago when I used to live here. I let them keep it... I've got about 800GB on there, and it's stuck on a 100mbit since my main ethernet line is Cat5 and not 5e
So... I gotta bring another HDD over next time to do a format/install... I want to keep this one available if things don't pan out right.
Any suggestions? I tried all the things I did last time, only this time I got Driver Sweeper to finally work!! .NET framework had to be on here... I already had 2.0 I think, so I just went with installing 2.0 SP2, 3.0, 3.5...
I ran DriverSweeper 2.1, Driver Cleaner Pro, Glary Utilities, and CCleaner, all in safe mode and various combinations.
Before doing all of this tonight, I uninstalled the onboard audio by uninstalling SoundMax from the control panel, rebooting to safemode and cleaning with DriverCleaner Pro (driver sweeper doesn't have 'soundmax' in its list), restarted, went to BIOS and disabled onboard, save and exit, turned off as soon as machine POSTed, installed x-fi fatality card, went into windows, and since then I've been trying everything I stated in my posts tonight.
I tried:
Support Pack 2.0 (I think that's Daniel K)
PAX v1.35, v1.40, v1.60 (yup, all of them)
Creative X-fi driver from their website
PAX's newest suite (was going to try software without driver)
All of them say they don't detect a supported hardware.
Oh, and I also flashed to the newest motherboard BIOS, and I even uninstalled chipset drivers, ran cleaners... I tried installing the XFi drivers while there was no chipset driver, and then reinstalled chipset drivers and tried again.
Other than formatting, did I miss anything? Yes, I've tried diff PCI slots. Yes, this is the SECOND X-Fi card I've tried in this machine and they all give me this problem.
I understand if no one wants to help... I'm probably just beating a dead horse, but I'm so eager to find a solution!!! One thing I lack is knowing how to adjust/program drivers, or I'd be doing that too!!