What are your system specs?
Specific brand and model of motherboard please. Does it have the latest available BIOS installed?

Do you have the chipset drivers for your motherboard installed? It kinda sounds like you don't since you say that the first thing you are trying to do is get the sound card working.

Have you tried a different PCI slot?

I have an intel branded Sock 1155 board. Model number DZ68DB. I have tried two of the three PCI slots. No dice.

I haven't bothered updating the bios, but I suppose I could try.

On my first go around, I did the chipset drivers first and ran into the same freezing issue. Every time after that I haven't bothered.

Full specs

Intel G470 Celeron CPU
Intel DZ68DB 1155
8gb of DDR3 single DIMM (it is all I have at the moment)
HD 4850 Graphics
Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music PCI
2TB HDD
120GB SSD

I have also tried installing windows on the SSD and the HDD, that doesn't seem to make a difference.

Sounds like a faulty sound card to me. You wouldn't happen to have another system you can test it in do you?

Ok, I have had some progress on this... sort of.

If I install the c++ redistributable and .net framework 4.0, I can usually get a driver to install. I also found a legacy driver from 2006 to test. Sometimes the installation still freezes, but sometimes it finishes, and I have managed to get it to finish with all three drivers.

One of three things will happen after I install the driver and restart

1) It will freeze during the next boot sequence on the windows logo
2) It will freeze the first time, but get in the second time. No sound.
3) I get into windows and can adjust the volumen and play an MP3 file, but no sound.

Which outcome I get seems almost random. I have tried swapping in a different graphics card and installing different drivers before the sound card with no success.

I ran three minutes of prime95 stress test on my CPU with no errors. Hardly exhaustive, but I don't have any reason to suspect so far that my CPU, memory, or motherboard are faulty.

I am thinking one of three possibilities:

1) My platform is incompatible for some reason. No idea why that would be.
2) I am missing a software depedency. No idea what that would be, especially for the 2006 driver release.
3) I have a faulty sound card? This seems maybe most likely.

I am open to suggestions. Thanks cyclone3d for giving some. I have my main desktop I could try, but I really don't want to troubleshoot a bunch of garbage with windows if something doesn't work out, so I am going to chalk this one up to bad hardware and move on with integrated sound for now.

Yeah.. either something is seriously wrong with your install of XP or the card is bad.

The X-Fi Xtreme Music was the first X-Fi card I ever had and it just worked with no problems with the regular driver install over the course of a few different builds it was used in.

You could also try this driver pack. It supports XP thru Win10 x64 and includes all the utility programs. I have used it across all the OSs it supports and with a variety of cards.
http://danielkawakami.blogspot.com/2017/01/sb … rt-pack-40.html

swaaye wrote:

You could also try this driver pack. It supports XP thru Win10 x64 and includes all the utility programs. I have used it across all the OSs it supports and with a variety of cards.
http://danielkawakami.blogspot.com/2017/01/sb … rt-pack-40.html

Thanks, I gave that a try. I was able to get it installed and it booted after restarting ok. The only audio I could get out of it was popping noises and the occasional note. The second time I restarted it locked up windows. I also tried a difference image for the XP SP3 install CD with all of the updates rolled into it and that didn't work either. I am about 95% certain the card is defective now.

I just bought and SB0770 Xtreme Gamer card and I am returning this one. I am hoping for better luck this time.

I got my X-Fi Xtreme Gamer in the mail today. Installed it and the drivers, and it worked like a charm. All that trouble over bad hardware! Happy now though, I played 15 minutes of splinter cell chaos theory in glorious HD, 3D positional audio and it sounds and runs great. Quite happy now. Thanks for the help.