Windows 98 SE refuses to load the sound card driver with the error message in the screenshot.
This is with the kX Project Sound Blaster Live drivers and SoundBlaster 5.1 SB0100:

try a older sb live driver it might work?

Or upgrade your OS. I've have a SBL! 5.1 card for over 2 and a half years, still works like a charm.

Because I like this OS too, I for now decided to take it out temporarily and use the Nvidia onboard APU.

Install WDM Update (included in Unofficial Service Pack) and use manufacter drivers instead of kX.

What the bleep is this all about? The driver installer from Creative gives me the error message saying that a Sound Blaster Live 5.1 couldn't be found on my system and then terminates!!

I DIDN'T GET THE WRONG DRIVER, AFAIK!!

Then when I tried another one from Creative, Windows still is bitching about the the fact that MMDEVLDR can't load the driver!!

Nobody told me that this was an issue with Asus A7N8X family motherboards and using a pre-Windows 2000 OS!!

The Nvidia onboard audio don't have this problem.

Did Creative lie to me that it's compatible with Windows 98 SE?

Do you have this product: http://www.creative.com/products/product.a...7&product=14184 ?

I see:

Minimum System Requirements

* Microsoft Windows XP (SP2) or Windows 2000 (SP4)


Have you tried to look at http://www.creative.com/language.asp?sDest...pport/downloads ?

What is exactly the model you have? What PCI ID it has?

You will in registry under [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Enum\PCI\ - my Soundblaster Live! 1024 has the ID: VEN_1102&DEV_0002&SUBSYS_80271102&REV_08 - it means

Or you can use Everest - http://www.lavalys.com/ - for the identification (In Devices -> PCI Devices).

Or you can try to use DriverAgent - http://driveragent.com/ to see if they know about the driver for your OS.
The scan works with IE (ActiveX installed), Firefox (extension installed), Opera (extra program installed). Does not work with Mozilla Suite and Mozilla SeaMonkey.
Always it is possible to use the search - http://driveragent.com/scanorsearch.php

Petr

I wouldnt upgrade, try the bios settings some have a sound blaster setting,
I got away from sb and got a yamaha ds-xg and it is awesome, on 98 that is.......

Well, you've found the bug that rears its ugly head when wdm's are uninstalled with an SBLive. If you peruse the Creative forum's, you'll see many with that "no Creative (or SoundBlaster) hardware installed" message.

One way to (sometimes) fix it is to use CTZAPPXXX.exe (sometimes no XXX) to install the driver first, then the software program install works. This works with the newer (since 2002) WDM drivers, but I have no idea if the older vxd's are CTZAPable!

If not, you can try removing the driver (if it's still there) in device manager, rebooting, then directing the Windows installer to the Audio\English\drivers\9x (check the cd to see exactly) folder and after rebooting with the driver installed try to run the cd.

There are cards that only work with the cd's that they came with. OEM's and such. Unfortunately, there are cards that only work sometimes with the cd's they came with, as well!

Sometimes it takes a format and Windows fresh install to get back the fresh registry so the cd works. After years of troubleshooting this, no one has ever figured out what is removed after uninstalling the Creative drivers/software that causes this wrong hardware detection.

It is best, with Creative cards, to install and update, but never uninstall their stuff if you want to use the card again without a format. You may get lucky, but most of the time not. Again, that CTZAPP thing solves the problem MOST of the time with the newer drivers.

Also, with the 5.1 card cd's, they are set to install WDM's by default. If you don't want this, you must create an Sb_install folder on your harddrive and copy the entire contents of the cd to it. Then, in the Audio\English\Setup folder, you must change the properties of the Audio.ini file to uncheck Read Only. Then change the value of 98SEWDM=1 and WINMEWDM=1 to both 0's. Then save it and recheck Read Only in the file's properties. Then you run either CTRUN.EXE (sometimes it doesn't work after choosing "English," or the Setup.exe in the Audio folder.

That is with the old LiveWare 3.0 cd's. With the newer driver cd's you can only change it to vxd after the cd is installed by running CTZAPP, uninstalling the WDM, rebooting, installing the VXD. Don't bother though. The newer vxd's sound like crap and don't install the SB16 Windows dosbox emulation. With the newer software you're better off with the WDM drivers.

Welp, I don't have the CD, because this sound card was given to me. Should I try to download an ISO of it?





Nope. That one don't even appear to be the same model! The model of mine is SB0100. That don't look like a SB0100!

The SB0100 probably is the first SoundBlaster Live sound card, thus
it probably supports Windows 98 SE. This is the link based on the model code:

http://us.creative.com/support/downloads/d...=32&Image4.y=11


Also, the sound card was fine under Windows 2000 SP4, thus the sound card isn't bad!

It smells like a hotfix is required for this!

No, the SB0100 was not the first SBLive card. I have CT4760, SB0100, and SB0224. The SB0100 was actually the last one issued with the old Liveware 3.0 software. If you have the cd for it, you have the best version of the VXD drivers for the Live.

You may have run into the bug I mentioned after uninstalling the kXProject drivers. Something gets removed after uninstalling WDM's on the Live cards that messes up the card detection of the Creative setup programs.

If you do a fresh Windows install, I'll bet you could install the cd. BUT DON'T! You'll get the worst WDM drivers for the Live which are installed by that cd by default. And you'd be back where you started.

See my other post in this thread and copy the cd to an Sb_install folder on your hard drive and change the 2 Audio.ini settings for WDM from 1 to 0, and then run setup and things should be fine.

Just update PlayCenter to 3.02.52 and uncheck that Creative News thing. Just tick the drop down on the Creative Launcher and uncheck the Check for Live News Updates thing. It's not connected to any link anymore, but it's another process that runs unless you turn it off.

Tell Spybot to ignore the detection for all the News entries too. This way it won't bork your Liveware install.

Oh. And go into device manager and in your Multimedia Properties hardware tab, go into Audio Compression Codecs and to the properties of the Creative mp3 codec (ctmp3.acm.) Tell it to not use this device. Now Windows Media Player won't play mp3's all screwed up and mess up startup sounds in your Themes. It's not compatible with an active Creative ctmp3 codec.

If you call Creative, they can sell you a cd with the same software and also the 252 driver included that the XP download has (that SBLive UniPack.) This cd's package runs flawlessly with the WDM driver on 98SE. Too bad you can't just use the download, but that doesn't have some 98SE updates you need, or all the software you get with the cd. That package doesn't need any updating (except turning off the mp3 codec). You get the latest PlayCenter 3.02.52 for 98SE and the Recorder, Remote Center (if you have the LiveDrive), Wave Editor, Minidisk, Surround Mixer with the built in EAX, AudioHQ, etc. I got mine with my SB0224 card.

So many possibilities. I'm sure you can get it working.

I probably don't require PlayCenter. I just want the drivers, SoundFont samples and surround sound support.

I'm gonna use Quintessential Player.

You then would choose a custom install and pick just AudioHQ, Soundfont Manager, and Windows Drivers.

Gotta use the older LiveWare 3.0 drivers and install Surround Mixer as well if you want surround virtualization. They called it Movie Mode or Live Surround, I think.

With the newer drivers you need PlayCenter installed and in player mode open the middle section and tick CMSS to on. They removed the surround modes from the newer Surround Mixer, so you need PlayCenter to turn CMSS on.

Otherwise only 5.1 sources (like DVD's) will use more than the front 2 speakers. With CMSS, it virtualizes the rest so you can hear your 2 channel mp3's out of all the speakers.

So, they force you to install PlayCenter on the newer offerings. Players like Foobar2000 offer a plugin that offers stereox2. You might like that better. Then you don't need PlayCenter for music, but you still would need it to get your games to play out of all the speakers.

By the way, a poster named "BadBoy" (not sure about upper or lower case letters) has a thread on the Creative US SoundBlaster forum with links to download ISO's of several installation cd's. You might find one that works for you there. us.creative.com is the us site, then go to the Support dropdown, then choose the forums.

If you're fortunate enough to have one or two ISA slots, just
go to eBay and get an SB-AWE 32 or 64.

Anyway, I suspect the reason for this driver's failure is that it
wasn't really tested on Win98, as you would expect these
days. Microsoft hacked various forms of NT-emulation into
Win9x/Me, but since it's no longer being updated, drivers
that attempt to use unsupported APIs will undoubtedly
become more and more widespread.

That's weird (as a lot of computer stuff is!)

The latest released version of the kXProject driver is supported on 98SE. The newer beta's are not, however.

So if you used the one on the official download page it should work. Maybe posting on the official forum for it at driverheaven would get someone who knows about this to help.

I might try uninstalling the driver from the start menu shortcut, rebooting, and uninstalling the software from the shortcut. That's their official uninstall method. Then perhaps either try again or use DriverCleaner before trying again. Perhaps you had other drivers/software for the card installed before and the different versions of the files are conflicting. DriverCleaner helps with that sort of thing.

Nope! This was with a fresh Windows 98 SE installation!

Is there any way to get those drivers without downloading a monstrous ISO?

Which drivers do you mean? The cd images posted by badboy on the Creative forum's?

For XP you don't need that, as the Creative download sections have the Unipack full setup downloadable, and then you just add the PlayCenter 3.02.52 and 3.02.70 to what you install. The other updates you can't use since you don't have an original version (minidisc, remote center, etc).

But for 9x, they just offer a driver for those who lost their install cd and that driver is not the updated (bug fixed) version. It is the older, crappy sounding and bug ridden WDM driver from the Liveware 3.0 cd offered with the 5.1 cards. You don't want to install that.

So badboy's iso would be one way. Another way is calling Creative who will sell you the modern cd with all the modern updated applications and drivers (252's, like the Uni-Pack) for 9x, XP, 2000. The same one that comes with the last versions of the SBLive 5.1 Creative released for retail (with the SB0224 cards in them).

I bought one once which is one version older than the Uni-Pack, with the 244 drivers. They just charge like $5.00 for it, not too bad. I hope that's not still what they're selling, as it is not the 252's but rather sort of the first (like, beta) version of the unified Audigy 1, SBLive drivers. I think you could experiment with manually updating that to the extracted Uni-Pack for XP download in device manager or (preferably, if it would work) using the CTZAPP exe program from the driver folder of that download. I think that as long as the cd ran it's setup you would then have all the necessary 9x files installed already so the Uni-Pack driver would have what it needs to work on 98SE.

I think you need some cd with the newer set on it for getting those drivers to work on 98SE.

Creative claims on their website that the original Liveware 3.0 (the 5.1 version on the cd that comes with the card) is still the best for 98SE. Today, I disagree with their assessment. I found that driver will cause Windows to eventurally give an IOS error on startup and the system will no longer boot. I tried with an SBLive Platinum 5.1 on 4 different installs on 2 computers. Eventually, as I updated Windows, that boot up IOS Real Mode memory allocation failure would make Windows inaccessable.

So, no cool vxd driver with the old SB16 emulation on 98SE anymore.

But, the 252 WDM's are better since they work flawlessly and include the cool Advanced parametric EQ settings for music! But yes, you do need a cd with at least the 244's on it.

Edit - Or, you can somehow get me your address and I could burn a cdr of the whole package and mail it to you. I don't know how we could do that though.

Have you try to change your power supply ?? I have the same trouble and i resolved with a new 400W power supply.

Do you mean my problem with the IOS error or RJARRRPCGP's problem with the kXProject install?

On my 2 boxes currently, I have an Antec Trublue 480 and a Thermaltake 480. So I think I have quality power coming through.

I think it's more a problem with the way newer processors and chipsets use memory. I'm sure if I fired up one of my older boards the SBLive's vxd's would have no problem. But I think is wants to use what is being used by these new motherboards and eventually causes a conflict. Note that this is a dos conflict as is happens before Windows loads the desktop.

I'm sure the newer WDM package would work fine though. But in that case I'd rather use my better soundcards. The cool Dos drivers were why I was fooling around with the SBLive. We don't need it these days though, with Dosbox around.

That's impossible! Because Prime95 and 3D Mark passed, even when OC'ed!

Prime95 can fail even with a PC that appears to be stable, thus that's out of the question!

Installing a sound card driver isn't gonna put the PC at full load!

If it was my power supply, I wouldn't be able to keep my OC.

As there seems to be some confusion over SoundBlaster Live and win98SE let me give some facts. I've been researching this for a new win98SE install on a new PC and have been in contact four times with Creative CS on this:

Assuming your mobo/PC itself supports win98SE, then:

1. SoundBlaster Live series cards work fine with win98SE. They really do. Make sure you use Creative drivers. Unfortunately this product is no longer marketed by Creative (in Europe at least.) This gives rise to a problem when building new systems with win98SE.

OK, what is/is not supported now?:

2. According to Creative CS (customer services), and i quote: "Audigy SE is NOT supported in Win98SE, [and] SB Live 24 bits is NOT supported in win98Se as well."

3. "Audigy2 and Audigy 2ZS are supported in win98SE." (no good for me, overkill)

:-) BTW, here's a tip if you happen to have a dual boot system with XP and a SB Live card. YOU CAN UPGRADE FREE to Audigy 24 bit for winXP. DON'T install drivers below on win98SE because it'll screw things up (won't do any lasting damage), but DO install on XP. You'll be getting the equivalent of an Audigy for free! It works. Creative files needed are:

EAX4DRV_AUDIGY2_1_84_50 drivers and
Ctcomp.exe (7.3.0)

have you ever tried third party drivers for your sb live? i've been using them for a few weeks now and their way better and more stable than the original crap. visit this site: http://kxproject.lugosoft.com/