Debilitating X-Fi Fatal1ty Noi

Question

I've read pages and pages of the "X-Fi Fatalty Popping/crackling noises" thread, altho honestly, not all of it. But here's the thing.
Some people on the thread sound like they have my problem, but others talk a lot about faint or rare pops or hisses or other noises easily explained as bad connections, or relays connecting or disconnecting.
I don't care about any of that, so please don't reply to this with 'Yeah, mine makes a faint hiss or pop, blah blah.' This sound problem is intollerable. The system makes loud pops or crackles when no sound should be made, and horrendous staticky scratching or at least popping over the sound that is supposed to be made.
I also find particularly useless comments like "Don't purchase that motherboard / chipset / memory / OS / ice cream." Thanks those comments really help... Oh, wait, no, no they don't. So don't 'help' that way please.
Meanwhile, thank you very much to anyone who can help!
Here's my system specs:
Windows XP SP2
Creative Sound Blaster X-FI Fatalty Platinum
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum nVidia Socket 939 Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 2.0GHz
2GB kit (GBx2)
COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UB Black /Blue Computer Case
ULTRA-QUIET PSU: SILENCER? 470 ATX
ATI All-in-Wonder X800 XL 256MB PCIE - 00-7430
3 WD Caviar SE 200GB 7200RPM 8MB SATA II Hard Dri've
Creative SBS 5. 560 - PC Multimedia Home Theater Speaker System
.44MB FLOPPY DRIVE
DVD-ROM Dri've
Shortly after I purchased my new system, I messed up and the computer locked up. So I hit the reset button. After the system came back up, the sound card was horrendous.
I don't mean faint anything, this is every sound the card makes is horribly scratchy like a broken wire in the system somewhere shorting out. It gets better to a regular popping behind all sounds (almost like a badly scratched record) and as bad as no sound at all, or solid static with faint sounds in the background. Also, when the system boots up, and other random times when there's not supposed to be noise, there's either some random popping, or something that sounds almost exactly like the tanks shooting in the old Atari game Tank. BKSHEEEEEeeeeeeeewwww (tone decending).
I planned to call Creative immediately, but they were closed (it was Friday evening.)
I tried everything to fix it immediately, pulling the card, updating drivers, reinstalling Windows, everything. Alas, nothing fixed it.
Eventually I did something and the problem went away... pulled the card and left it out of the system, or perhaps just left my system off for a day or so in disgust and disappointment, I can't remember exactly now. But, now that it was working, I couldn't call Creative (altho I seriously should have... darn it) because I wasn't technically having a problem anymore.
Fast forward to today. I went to reboot my computer, but I accidentally told it to go into Stand-By mode (what a stupid option for XP to offer a desktop). The system locked up, so I hit the reset button completely forgetting the problem I had last time...
Sure enough, it's back. And I'm tempted to call Creative anyway (cause I'm only just outside my 60 days support, and I did have the problem before that...) but I figured I'd check for updates to the knowledge base and stuff here. Alas, nothing but the existing overblown/bloated thread. So I decided to register and start my own thread.
If I change the sound mode (game to recording or whatever) the sound will go from terrible to barely tollerable, but then slowly drift back towards terrible.
Once the problem is gone, it's really gone, beautiful crystal clear sound. But I need to know how to get it gone! Rebooting doesn't fix it, shutting down the system doesn't, even pulling the card out, waiting, and reinserting it isn't enough. My guess is that somehow one of the card's settings is screwed up when I hit the reset button and doesn't get reset properly. But I desperately need to know how to fix it without shutting down my system for 2 or 3 days everytime I forget and hit the reset button...
(Altho, come to think of it, perhaps it's time to disconnect my reset button... but meanwhile...) Anyone know of this problem? Or have a good solution? Thanks in advance for any help!

Answer 1

Frustrating, > but thank goodness...
It's <i>working</i> all of a sudden!
Crystal clear sound without even restarting.
On the one hand I'm really happy!
On the other hand, I don't want to wait 24 hours every time I have this problem for it to mysteriously go away...
I definitely need to disconnect my reset button so this doesn't happen again.
Or maybe I should buy a new X-Fi Fatalty, intentionally hit reset, then call Creative for my 60 days support... Then, when they solve the problem, return the card, and use the fix. :P
Ok, just kidding, but I was seriously thinking that, if I had to buy a new card, I was definitely going to hit reset intentionally and call support immediately.
Thank you for your help, altho we still didn't find a solution... Figures.
Believe me, if it happens again, I'll be resurrecting this thread!
On a side note, I think I managed to use all the supported emoticons in this message.
Spaces added, comma separated: : ) , : ( , ; ) , : D , : o , > : ( , : P
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