This is a weird one:

I've been putting together a couple of different retro systems. One is an Athlon XP 3000+ on an MSI K7N2 Delta L motherboard (Nforce2 chipset). The other is an Athlon 64 x2 4400+ on an Asus A8V Deluxe (a VIA K8T800Pro northbridge and VIA VT8237 southbridge). Knowing fully that it's overkill for the PCI bus, I've decided to use SSDs in RAID in these systems because I simply happen to have the SSDs and no reason not to take advantage of them. The Asus A8V Deluxe board already has a Promise 20378 RAID controller on it, so I'm using that. The Athlon XP board doesn't have a RAID controller, or even any SATA ports, so I'm using a PCI RAID card. Currently it's a Promise SX4100, but I've also tried a Silicon Image 3114 based card, which these days is the default (and often the only available) cheap-o basic PCI RAID card to get.

Video cards in both systems are AGP GeForce 6800 GTs.

Both of these motherboards have onboard Realtek ALC audio codecs, but since those are completely worthless for providing a good audio experience, I've decided to just disable the onboard audio and go with much more upscale PCI sound cards. My first choice was an Audigy 2 ZS, which I duly bought from Ebay (yes, making sure it's an actual SB0350, and not one of the far too common crippled Dell Audi-fakes).

And that's where the fun begins.

I installed Windows XP SP3 on the Athlon 64 system, and likewise installed Windows 2000 SP4 on the Athlon XP. Both work fine and run stable when using no audio or their onboard audio codecs. But when I try putting the Audigy 2 ZS in either of them, I run into problems keeping these Windows installations functional. Specifically, the following happens: both Windows XP and Windows 2000 sometimes start up fine, and when they start, they run, but randomly (as far as I can tell) when attempting to start up, the Windows install will be hosed. It just won't be able to read one of the configuration directories in the Windows System folder. Win2k will tell me to run setup from my Windows install media and try to repair the Windows installation. I forget what Windows XP will do, but it appears to be the same problem, inability to read configuration causing Windows to be unable to start. Inevitably, I end up having to boot from my Windows installation CD and reinstall Windows completely.

This ONLY seems to happen when I have the Audigy 2 ZS installed, and run Windows on any of the Promise RAID controllers I've tried so far. It doesn't seem to be just when I'm using SSDs or when I'm using actual RAID arrays, either, because that's where the Promise SX4100 comes in replacing the SiI 3114: see, I tried the SiI 3114 first, not realizing that the SiI 3114 has a known hardware / firmware bug that prevents it from using anything that's SATA II or III. That means I can't use my SSDs with it, but the Promise SX4100 will work with them, so I thought maybe it was just a general compatibility problem between the Audigy and something about how Promise handles its RAID controllers. I have a Western Digital Raptor 74gb HDD, though, which is SATA I, so it works with the SiI 3114, and so I did some experimenting and ran Windows off that drive and controller, just using it as a single drive not in RAID. And, wouldn't you know it, having the Audigy 2 ZS in the system also eventually bricks Windows installs on the SiI controller, too.

The weird thing, though: when Windows does work with the Audigy 2 ZS installed, it sounds great. No static, no popping, no stutters, none of the "usual" issues people sometimes seem to have with finicky Audigy cards. Just really great sounding clean audio... which, you know, is why I wanted that card in the first place. So it's very frustrating that it periodically self-destructs the OS, making it unusable.

The cherry on top of all this is that when I tried switching to a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz sound card, it works just fine. The card sounds about as good as the Audigy, and behaves perfectly. No randomly deciding to go on a data demolition derby.

H I know that a lot of people have complaints about how Creative Labs really didn't do the smartest things with the PCI bus timing and latency with the Audigy and related sound chips from that era, and I suspect that these problems have something to do with it. RAID controllers, especially using SSDs more than capable of saturating them, are obviously going to be very high bandwidth demands on the PCI bus, and if they're sharing it with a device notorious for being careless with how things are timed, I can easily see it leading to corruption problems. But I've also never heard of or found references to anyone else having this particular problem. Most problems with the Audigy cards, as far as I can find, are things that manifest themselves as audio quality problems or the whole system stuttering or freezing, not in losing data from storage devices.

Has anyone else ever had these kinds of issues with an Audigy 2 ZS not playing well with a RAID controller? Like, is this a known thing, and I just haven't heard about it somehow? I've tried changing PCI latency timer settings in BIOS, with no seeming effect. Are there any other ideas for solutions, or known solutions? Could this be a one-off bad card causing atypical problems that don't represent most Audigy cards? Or do Audigy controllers just inherently suck at sharing the PCI bus and this is probably unfixable?

The simple solution here is to just pick up a second Turtle Beach Santa Cruz and stick with those, but I kinda do want to get an Audigy 2 ZS working if there's a way.

Sorry this is so long.