Speaker Settings Always Crash

Question

Whenever I try to go onto Speaker Settings it always crashes so I am unable to change the setting on my speakers which means i am stuck on 2. speakers ALL the time unless i go into the control panel and change which i have to do after evey reboot!
I have re-installed everything possible including Windows and this has not fixed the problem. It is getting very fustrating and as I can see from other posts in the forum it appears that nothing is being done about it.
Problems have also occured since I installed the sound card included random crashes while playing games and times where the screen resolution decides to randomlt change and the volume randomly changes too.
I was wondering if anyone else has found a solution to this problem or if Creative have one themselves.

Answer 1

I would think the random resolution changing would be down to a graphics driver problem rather than a soundcard problem. Here are a few things to try (one at a time though).
) Go to Device Manager and make sure that the soundcard and VGA card aren't sharing an IRQ. It is best if the VGA card has its own IRQ. Switch the soundcard to a different pci slot if they are sharing.
2) Make sure you have got all the driver/software updates for your soundcard, VGA card and motherboard.
3) Try uninstalling the soundcard and removing it from the computer to see if the crashes still occur in games.
4) If you updated any drivers before the problems appeared, try changing back to older versions.
5) You could try installing Windows XP SP or SP2 if you haven't done so already.
Good Luck!