Audigy suddenly stops working after doing chkds

Question

System: P4800D-X mobo
??? Pent 4 HT
??? 3G memory
??? Hitachi 300G sata hd
??? Toshiba dvd burner (oem from micro center)
??? Audigy sound
??? Ati 9600 video card
Last December my system started to act sluggish and eventually crashed on me. Pulled the hd out and did a chkdsk with /f option using another comp I no longer have now. It fixed whatever caused the files to be corrupted and system has been working fine since. Although my sound card no longer works and for some strange reason XP home wants to load two drivers for the DVD burner. Causing this to not work as well.
Lately, I've had a bit of spare time and have been trying unsuccessfully to get the sound card to work again. I've read the FAQ on potential resolutions. Oddly, without reading it, I had already done most of those suggestions. I've totally wiped the drivers out more times then I care to count. Even went so far as to boot into safemode to double check that they weren't installing there. I've even gone to the extent of running a registary cleaner just to make sure there's no residual left overs.
Here's the odd part now. Digging even deeper into my system. The main driver for this card is CTAUD2k.SYS. In MSCONFIG "tools", this driver is listed as being one that has to be manually loaded, not loaded automatically. Odd that is. Even odder still, when I run DXDIAG, when I click on the sound tab, I get a 0X88780078 (no driver) error. Yet when I go to music, the windows synthesizer test, it comes back with the same 0X88780078 (no driver) error as well. The other two test pertaining to SB Audigy DirectMusic Sythesizer [EF40] and the SB Audigy Audio [EF40} both work and I can actually hear music!!! Strange, eh?
Just for the record. I have gone to Control Panel -->Sound and Audio devices--->Creative SB--->Properties--->Properties. All three "options" (Audio devices, Midi devices and instruments, Mixer devices) are turned on.
Other oddities. When I tried to do a "detect creative devices" from the support page, it said I don't have any creative devices installed on my system. Go figure!
Any suggestions would be greatly appericated.
Thanks
Jaxx

Answer 1

I've thought about that. Actually thought of doing a complete reinstall of XP home. However; I've a ton of music that I had just ripped as mp3's and I haven't had a chance to burn off yet. Also, while Asus does make some quality products...my particular mobo isn't one of them. The P4S800D-X motherboard has several issues. Like it can't handle sata 2 dri'ves, even backward compatible ones.
To do a reinstall or even repair on my system. I'd have to fix the dvd/cdrom first, and then it's like the chicken and egg situation of windows 95. XP wants to handle the drivers of my sata dri've as a scsii one. To do so you have to add them when prompted during the windows xp install process. Only it keeps looking for them on CD. No CD came with my Hitachi HD. It didn't need them. I can of course get drivers for the mobo that handle the scsii, but that would be placed on a floppy. And windows won't read the floppy!!!
There is a work around for installing the SISRAID drivers for the dvd/cdrom. But I'd need the dvd/cdrom to work to do them!
Things I forgot to mention or changed since I posted. I did upgrade reciently to XP home sp3 beta. I've upgraded to dx 9.22c (current as of end of march '08). I've done a google of the 0x88780078 error message. Seems this was a common error message a while back. I've tried many of the things that were suggested to fix that error message. None have worked. I've also tried at one time to install the on board ac'97 audio. And no such luck...this HAS to be a windows issue.
Since folks seem to upgrade video and audio cards alot, you would think that I could go to MS or even some website and get a "package" of all the windows audio .dll's and drivers and a how-to to clean them up and re-install them.