Blue screen - Can someone read a minidump *.dmp file?

On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 22:17:07 -0400, "E"
<> wrote:

>
> "Paul" <> wrote in message news:frkhdr$15d$...
> >
> > It almost seems like two different problems, or like perhaps
> > a new driver was installed for the sound card, somewhere through
> > the period covered by the dumps.
>
> No, the SoundBlaster is still using the 2001 dated driver that that comes
>with a Windows XP install. Windows Update has a newer one dated 2003. This
>might fix the problem, but I'm afraid to chance it now. I've read about
>Creative drivers being buggy.

1) MS does not write your CL sound card driver. When
Windows was first installed, unfortunately MS thrust that
old driver upon you, it would have been better if MS never
bundled any driver and you (or whoever installed the OS) had
instead gotten the then-current driver from Creative.

2) Letting Windows Update take control of this would be
doubly bad since you lose more control of what the default
fallback driver is, versus having nothing associated after
uninstalling an official Creative driver.

You should make a backup of the OS, so in worst case you
just revert back to how it was before any changes are made,
then download and install the latest XP driver from
Creative's website, not Windows Update.


> I have the Asus Probe software installed now. Its running pretty cool, but
>the case is open and there is no load, exept for me typing on the keyboard.
>

Hopefully this is correct, but on occasion Asus Probe has
been known to not be accurate for any given board. You
might double-check what the bios health/hardware monitor
screen displays for temps, though for CPU it may be a little
higher reading in the bios because the bios doesn't have
Halt-Idle cooling mechanism like Windows does.

"E" <> wrote in message
news:...
|
| "mr deo" <> wrote in
message
| news:3WjDj.21827$...
| >
| > "E" <> wrote in message
| > news:...
| >
| >> Here is a list of components:
| >> ASUS P4P800SE 865PE/ICH5 motherboard.
| >> Nvidia video card
| >> 1024MB of name brand memory listed as compatible with the board
| >> Antec 500W Basiq PSU
| >>
| >> Also it has in it PCI cards from her previous Dell computer
such as...
| >> A Lucent chip set soft modem
| >> Sound Blaster 5.1
| >> three port firewire card
| >>
| >> I can lose these PCI cards from the old Dell, since she is on
DSL, the
| >> Asus board has onboard sound, and who needs firewire.
| >
| > the SoundBlaster card is your problem.. Dump it, and dump all of
the
| drivers
| > and your pc will run flawless...
| >
| > SB cards are good if your willing to invest the time and effort
into
| making
| > them work AND making the software on the pc use them correctly.
| >
| > Even a properly configured SB card can err when other programs
make
| invalid
| > calls.
| >
|
| Yes, I have read this much before about SoundBlaster cards and
there
| drivers. People seem to harp on the drivers more.
|
| I have the same card in my system, and it hasn't ever given me
trouble.
| But I never play games. Just use it for music. A while ago I hooked
my MIDI
| keyboard up to the onboard sound in my box and there was to much
latency. So
| I got an SB Live 5.1. It worked good for that.
|
| The current driver in the problem PC is the original 2001 dated
driver
| that comes with XP. I assumed it would be stable. Windows Update is
offering
| a more recent driver dated 2003. I haven't checked Creative's site
yet.
| Still not sure whether to update the driver, or just remove the card
all
| together. I'm leaning towards the later.
|


Good detective work, now here's some suggestions for the "fix". Use
only the latest drivers from the Creative web site. Depending upon
the SBLive card you have (the model) it MAY only work "well" in a
particular PCI slot. I have an old SB0100 (I think that's the model
number) and have had several "fights" with the card to make it work
correctly in 2 different mobos. On one motherboard, the card would
not be recognized properly by the Plug-n-Pray subsystem except when
installed in a particular PCI slot. In another system, the SBLive
caused system lockups (which I identified eventually by trying to run
the mixer at startup, and an instant lockup would occur each time I
ran the creative mixer), and ATM, I can't recall what I did to fix
that problem, tho I must have fixed it as it now works properly with
win2k and winxp in that box (a dual boot system). Heh, I found some
of the info on my SBLive horror story, you can read it here:

http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/image-vp437057.html

In the end, the "solution" that worked for me was this: I put a newer
AMD Barton core CPU in the system and pulled out the 1.4G AMD Tbird
CPU. And, I can guarantee that the Tbird CPU was not defective
(memtest86 and prime95 stable as a rock), as it is still running in
another system. Isn't that the sh*ts.

There is a "driver cleaner" program for the SBLive drivers, run the
driver cleaner (ctzap seems to ring a bell) before installing the
latest drivers. I recommend against using the MS windows update site
for obtaining SBLive 5.1 drivers.

In the end, when it works right, the SBLive 5.1 cards are darn good
sound quality cards, imho, and I fought the battle to get mine working
in it's current system because it's my "digital recording" machine
which I use for recording/digitizing old vinyl records and for
recording satellite TV receiver audio/video programming which I make
into DVDs for my kid.

Of course, there is one other possibility, such as some sort of
oddball driver conflict between the SBLive driver and some other
system driver. However, I'd give the "install the latest drivers"
approach a go before giving up.
--
Best regards,
Kyle

"E" <> wrote in message
news:...
> The current driver in the problem PC is the original 2001 dated driver
> that comes with XP. I assumed it would be stable. Windows Update is
offering
> a more recent driver dated 2003. I haven't checked Creative's site yet.
> Still not sure whether to update the driver, or just remove the card all
> together. I'm leaning towards the later.
>
> Thanks for your reply
> Eddie

I use 3 creative cards at the moment, and I must say that I do like them!..
But....
The onboard sound is probably fine for what your user wants (they had a dell
FFS lol)..

Removing the card AND the drivers and allowing it to run long enough to see
if it bluescreens means that you can eliminate it..
If it crashes with the card out AND drivers removed, then that's your
problem..

with Creative products the newest driver isnt forever the best, but I would
try to get say the last 3-4 releases.. I dont know if any of their patches
contain firmware fixes but you might want to be aware of that just in case..
(as you cant roll them back as easily)

"E" <> wrote in message
news:...
> No, the SoundBlaster is still using the 2001 dated driver that that
comes
> with a Windows XP install. Windows Update has a newer one dated 2003. This
> might fix the problem, but I'm afraid to chance it now. I've read about
> Creative drivers being buggy.

Windows Update cant distinguish betwen cards that well..
Think of it this way, if you installed the wrong 2001 driver, it may think
that the hardware you have is the same as the drivers your using..

Or, the worse stuff is where companys like Linksys (creative do it too)
release "Version" changes that means old and new drivers are not
interchangable..
So you should look on the Creative site and make sure that it only list 1
version of the card.. Unified drivers are not that uncommon so it shouldnt
be a problem, but I wouldnt let windows update do it.

Clark wrote:
>
> Sorry I did not see the original message, but I used to get a Blue
> Screen with a pool call message in Vista, which was related to my
> modem. If you have one, try taking it out or disabling it if the
> system is running.

Notice that other answers are properly organized, by answering
either inline or at the bottom. You should also trim the quoted
material to only material relevant to your answer.

Please do not top-post. Your answer belongs after (or intermixed
with) the quoted material to which you reply, after snipping all
irrelevant material. See the following links:

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<http://www.caliburn.nl/topposting.html>
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--
[mailX-Mozilla-Status: 0009 at maineline dot net)
[page]: <http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>
Try the download section.


--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

kony wrote:
> On Sun, 16 Mar 2008 22:17:07 -0400, "E"
> <> wrote:
>
>> "Paul" <> wrote in message news:frkhdr$15d$...
>> >
>> > It almost seems like two different problems, or like perhaps
>> > a new driver was installed for the sound card, somewhere through
>> > the period covered by the dumps.
>>
>> No, the SoundBlaster is still using the 2001 dated driver that that comes
>> with a Windows XP install. Windows Update has a newer one dated 2003. This
>> might fix the problem, but I'm afraid to chance it now. I've read about
>> Creative drivers being buggy.
>
> 1) MS does not write your CL sound card driver. When
> Windows was first installed, unfortunately MS thrust that
> old driver upon you, it would have been better if MS never
> bundled any driver and you (or whoever installed the OS) had
> instead gotten the then-current driver from Creative.

Yes, I didn't think MS wrote it. But I read somewhere in the past that
the CL sound card driver bundled with XP install disk was stable. If the
old CL was indeed the culprit I am glad to have finally identified it,
and have learned a lesson on that as well.

I have the same card in my old system, and it hasn't causes any obvious
problems running Windows XP. Works fine in Linux too it seems. But the
Linux Sound Blaster driver is part of ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound
Architecture) written by open source contributors.

I also had 'Plug and Play aware OS' set to NO in the BIOS. I changed it
to YES. I don't know if that makes any difference now, or would have, in
the past.

>
> 2) Letting Windows Update take control of this would be
> doubly bad since you lose more control of what the default
> fallback driver is, versus having nothing associated after
> uninstalling an official Creative driver.

If MS didn't write the Creative Labs sound card driver bundled with the
XP install disk, then wouldn't this driver from Windows Update be a CL
written driver as well?

>
> You should make a backup of the OS, so in worst case you
> just revert back to how it was before any changes are made,
> then download and install the latest XP driver from
> Creative's website, not Windows Update.

After I read what you say here, I went to Creative's site, and they
apparently have a different driver for a Soundblaster 5.1 from Dell.
This SB 5.1 is indeed from her old Dell Dimension 4100. When I selected
my SB Live! 5.1 Digital (Dell) through Creative's menu system I was
eventually taken to a page that told me, "Please note that the product
you have selected has been classified as 'End of Service Life'". With no
apparent option to download a driver. I then went to Dell's site looking
for the driver and they have no option to select Windows XP as the
operating system for the Dell Dimension 4100. So it seems I was stuck
with Microsoft supplied drivers, or doing a web search to find
something. The common SB Live! 5.1's latest driver at Creative's site is
dated 2003, like the driver on at Windows Update.

I think I might have went through this when I first built the system,
and just settled for the bundled driver. A poor decision I suppose. I
wanted her to keep the SB Live! 5.1 because I thought it would provide
better gaming performance.

It doesn't much matter now though. I have removed the Sound Blaster 5.1,
a TI chipset Firewire card that I had transfered from the old Dell,
moved critical data to the designated data partition, reformatted the C
partition, installed XP from scratch, enabled onboard SoundMax hardware
and installed its latest driver from Asus.

I did the clean install because AVG Anti-virus has detected several
viruses over the last few months (although I don't think they where the
cause of the fatal stop errors and blue screens). Plus there was some
spyware, and three tool bars on the system. Could have stripped it all
away with Ad-Aware. But I was worried about viruses that AVG may not
have detected.

>
>
>> I have the Asus Probe software installed now. Its running pretty cool, but
>> the case is open and there is no load, exept for me typing on the keyboard.
>>
>
> Hopefully this is correct, but on occasion Asus Probe has
> been known to not be accurate for any given board. You
> might double-check what the bios health/hardware monitor
> screen displays for temps, though for CPU it may be a little
> higher reading in the bios because the bios doesn't have
> Halt-Idle cooling mechanism like Windows does.

Yes, Asus probe read 33C at idol, while the environmental monitor in the
BIOS measured 38C. I'll wait and see. Hopefully I won't get another call
saying "it blue screened again". When I hooked her system back up at
here place, I noticed the lights dim for a split second when I turned
the system on, or even when I flipped the switch on the power strip.
Hopefully not more cause for problems and will ruin my reputation as the
family system builder.

Thanks
Eddie

mr deo wrote:
> "E" <> wrote in message
> news:...
>> No, the SoundBlaster is still using the 2001 dated driver that that
> comes
>> with a Windows XP install. Windows Update has a newer one dated 2003. This
>> might fix the problem, but I'm afraid to chance it now. I've read about
>> Creative drivers being buggy.
>
> Windows Update cant distinguish betwen cards that well..
> Think of it this way, if you installed the wrong 2001 driver, it may think
> that the hardware you have is the same as the drivers your using..
>
> Or, the worse stuff is where companys like Linksys (creative do it too)
> release "Version" changes that means old and new drivers are not
> interchangable..
> So you should look on the Creative site and make sure that it only list 1
> version of the card.. Unified drivers are not that uncommon so it shouldnt
> be a problem, but I wouldnt let windows update do it.
>
>
See my reply to Kony. This SB Live! 5.1 is actually a SB Live! 5.1
Digital (Dell). I got it from her old Dell Dimension 4100. Unless I
missed something, which is possible, neither Creative or Dell seem to
offer a driver for this exact card, running Windows XP. I don't know if
it made a difference. But the SB Live! 5.1 Digital (Dell) is sitting on
my table now. I went with the onboard sound.

On Tue, 18 Mar 2008 03:43:49 -0400, E
<> wrote:


>>> No, the SoundBlaster is still using the 2001 dated driver that that comes
>>> with a Windows XP install. Windows Update has a newer one dated 2003. This
>>> might fix the problem, but I'm afraid to chance it now. I've read about
>>> Creative drivers being buggy.
>>
>> 1) MS does not write your CL sound card driver. When
>> Windows was first installed, unfortunately MS thrust that
>> old driver upon you, it would have been better if MS never
>> bundled any driver and you (or whoever installed the OS) had
>> instead gotten the then-current driver from Creative.
>
>Yes, I didn't think MS wrote it. But I read somewhere in the past that
>the CL sound card driver bundled with XP install disk was stable.

I'm sure they made a best effort to make it so, but if it
was ok would they release newer versions?


>If the
> old CL was indeed the culprit I am glad to have finally identified it,
>and have learned a lesson on that as well.

Nothing is identified yet, just don't be afraid to try a
newer driver. In general you should not use any drivers
that came with windows if you have a newer alternative.
That extends past the sound card to all other parts of the
system.


>
>I have the same card in my old system, and it hasn't causes any obvious
>problems running Windows XP. Works fine in Linux too it seems. But the
>Linux Sound Blaster driver is part of ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound
>Architecture) written by open source contributors.

It may not be the sound card, but if it were obvious at
first then there'd not be a problem, right? Trying a few
things is the remaining course.


>I also had 'Plug and Play aware OS' set to NO in the BIOS. I changed it
>to YES. I don't know if that makes any difference now, or would have, in
>the past.
>
>>
>> 2) Letting Windows Update take control of this would be
>> doubly bad since you lose more control of what the default
>> fallback driver is, versus having nothing associated after
>> uninstalling an official Creative driver.
>
>If MS didn't write the Creative Labs sound card driver bundled with the
>XP install disk, then wouldn't this driver from Windows Update be a CL
>written driver as well?

Yes, but that makes it at best as recent as what CL has to
offer and at worst, an older buggier driver. It isn't
exactly new now, 2004, let alone 2001 was eons ago in a
computer timeline.

>>
>> You should make a backup of the OS, so in worst case you
>> just revert back to how it was before any changes are made,
>> then download and install the latest XP driver from
>> Creative's website, not Windows Update.
>
>After I read what you say here, I went to Creative's site, and they
>apparently have a different driver for a Soundblaster 5.1 from Dell.

I had wondered about that but didn't write anything because
my memory of the difference and which sound card model was
vague. I know at least one Dell card was seemingly named to
be the same model but didn't have some hardware support that
the retail card did, so it needed to do some soft processing
from a different driver - although it wouldn't have been
uncommon for CL to have just merged all the files for both
types of cards into one installer then the installer
identifies the card and installs the appropriate files for
it.


>This SB 5.1 is indeed from her old Dell Dimension 4100. When I selected
>my SB Live! 5.1 Digital (Dell) through Creative's menu system I was
>eventually taken to a page that told me, "Please note that the product
>you have selected has been classified as 'End of Service Life'". With no
>apparent option to download a driver. I then went to Dell's site looking
>for the driver and they have no option to select Windows XP as the
>operating system for the Dell Dimension 4100. So it seems I was stuck
>with Microsoft supplied drivers, or doing a web search to find
>something. The common SB Live! 5.1's latest driver at Creative's site is
>dated 2003, like the driver on at Windows Update.

You might have some luck with a Google search like,
http://www.google.com/search?q=Live+5.1+Dell+driver
maybe throwing the word "XP" in as well.

2003 is an entire year, not a driver version number which is
what you'd need to compare them. Also there can be some
lag, when a driver is posted it may not be posted at both
the manufacturer's site and windows update simultaneously.

>
>I think I might have went through this when I first built the system,
>and just settled for the bundled driver. A poor decision I suppose. I
>wanted her to keep the SB Live! 5.1 because I thought it would provide
>better gaming performance.
>
>It doesn't much matter now though. I have removed the Sound Blaster 5.1,
>a TI chipset Firewire card that I had transfered from the old Dell,
>moved critical data to the designated data partition, reformatted the C
>partition, installed XP from scratch, enabled onboard SoundMax hardware
>and installed its latest driver from Asus.
>
>I did the clean install because AVG Anti-virus has detected several
>viruses over the last few months (although I don't think they where the
>cause of the fatal stop errors and blue screens).

It feels like we've been missing some critical info here.
Why wouldn't a virus be a suspect? Just because AVG can't
find anything now isn't always telling, some of them mutate
and let's face it, the ultimate goal of the virus writer is
for their creation not to be detected unless they want it to
be so, and AVG is a pretty popular AV due to being free so
any savvy malware writer would check whether AVG can detect
their payload.

I'm not suggesting it's probably a virus, could still be a
driver or something else.

Better question now is how did they get onto the system as
this is a potential security hole (even if a user opening
email with attachments) that needs closed to ensure a secure
environment.


>Plus there was some
>spyware, and three tool bars on the system. Could have stripped it all
>away with Ad-Aware. But I was worried about viruses that AVG may not
>have detected.

Yes, I've came across plenty of systems AVG couldn't clean,
some of the more aggressive viri will copy themselves
everywhere as fast as anything can find them, even have
separate threads just monitoring whether anything happened
to each (other) so if you or AVG gets rid of a file the
alternate thread just replaces it again. Real PITA to
clean, can take as much time as doing a clean install or
more, considering it's time spent at the keyboard instead of
letting the windows installer run unattended.



>>> I have the Asus Probe software installed now. Its running pretty cool, but
>>> the case is open and there is no load, exept for me typing on the keyboard.
>>>
>>
>> Hopefully this is correct, but on occasion Asus Probe has
>> been known to not be accurate for any given board. You
>> might double-check what the bios health/hardware monitor
>> screen displays for temps, though for CPU it may be a little
>> higher reading in the bios because the bios doesn't have
>> Halt-Idle cooling mechanism like Windows does.
>
>Yes, Asus probe read 33C at idol, while the environmental monitor in the
>BIOS measured 38C. I'll wait and see. Hopefully I won't get another call
>saying "it blue screened again". When I hooked her system back up at
>here place, I noticed the lights dim for a split second when I turned
>the system on, or even when I flipped the switch on the power strip.
>Hopefully not more cause for problems and will ruin my reputation as the
>family system builder.


Quite a few systems with a fair amount of capacitance in the
PSU will momentarily dim the lights due to inrush current to
the caps. Not a big deal so long as the (household) wiring
isn't intermittent which would tend to effect more than just
the PC.

You haven't mentioned if windows was fully patched (or I
overlooked it), there might be something more fundamental
wrong with windows itself as we do know it's windows after
all, plenty of things that don't effect everyone slip
through the cracks.

The clean OS installation was probably the best start
towards a solution, but if it ends up bluescreening once
every month or some similarly infrequent period then just
explain that they need to try more to isolate what the
common variable is each time it does, isolating something
that is rare and intermittent is difficult enough on a
simple electro/electronic/mechanical system let alone a PC
running windows.

Kyle wrote:
>
> Good detective work, now here's some suggestions for the "fix". Use
> only the latest drivers from the Creative web site. Depending upon
> the SBLive card you have (the model) it MAY only work "well" in a
> particular PCI slot.

See my reply to other posters. (I cross posted at first, then tried to
post individualy to the three groups, then decided to continue with
cross posting again, sorry if the thread has become hard to follow)

This is an SB Live! 5.1 Digital (Dell). Seems its hard to get a driver
for this card with Windows XP from either Creative or Dell. I
reinstalled Windows and went with onboard sound among other things to
address the problem.

> I have an old SB0100 (I think that's the model
> number) and have had several "fights" with the card to make it work
> correctly in 2 different mobos. On one motherboard, the card would
> not be recognized properly by the Plug-n-Pray subsystem except when
> installed in a particular PCI slot. In another system, the SBLive
> caused system lockups (which I identified eventually by trying to run
> the mixer at startup, and an instant lockup would occur each time I
> ran the creative mixer), and ATM, I can't recall what I did to fix
> that problem, tho I must have fixed it as it now works properly with
> win2k and winxp in that box (a dual boot system). Heh, I found some
> of the info on my SBLive horror story, you can read it here:
>
> http://www.nforcershq.com/forum/image-vp437057.html

What ordeals. I will check out the link for future reference. In
addition I removed a Firewire card, and moved the old Lucent/Agere
chipset modem taken from the Dell to the top PCI slot. I let Windows
Update update the driver for the modem. Hope that wasn't another no no.
The modem worked great while I used my dial-up connection to install
security patches from Windows Update and drivers from nVidia's website.

>
> In the end, the "solution" that worked for me was this: I put a newer
> AMD Barton core CPU in the system and pulled out the 1.4G AMD Tbird
> CPU. And, I can guarantee that the Tbird CPU was not defective
> (memtest86 and prime95 stable as a rock), as it is still running in
> another system. Isn't that the sh*ts.

Yes that can be frustrating. Works in one good working system, but for
some unexplainable reason, not in another.

I have only read about this prime95 recently, while googling the web for
solutions, and reading the replies in here. I haven't been
troubleshooting PCs much lately, exept for installing Linux on my box. I
used to run something called Performance Test, and do burn in tests with
Sisoft Sandra, which I'm sure you have heard of. I didn't run any of
these tests this time. I have what I think is quality hardware in this
system and its running in spec. But I am experiencing a little regret
over not running prime95 before I gave the PC back. Hopefully I won't
have a call to have to run it in the future on this system.

>
> There is a "driver cleaner" program for the SBLive drivers, run the
> driver cleaner (ctzap seems to ring a bell) before installing the
> latest drivers. I recommend against using the MS windows update site
> for obtaining SBLive 5.1 drivers.

The driver cleaner seems prudent, I'll look into that. There is also a
'third party' that writes drivers for SoundBlasters. kxdrv3534f-full is
the name of a driver I have archived on my HD. I forgot what the
advantages where, but the KX people claim it is superior and enables
features in the SB that are not in the Creative drivers. I forgot all
about it until just now.

I try to run Linux on my box now. I currently dual boot XP, and Suse
Linux 10.2. The ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) drivers for the
SB work well for MP3 and Video playback, but I have never gotten MIDI to
work in Linux. I think MIDI support is there, but might not always work
out of the box. Takes some effort on the user end to get it to work. But
thats just Linux. The worst thing that could happen in Linux is that you
would have no sound. Most Linux versions these days though I would
imagine work well with the old SB 5.1. But its usless to compare I
suppose, since Linux is a completely different animal. Linux doesn't
'blue screen'.

Hopefully the Windows Update thing doesn't haunt me on the Lucent
Winmodem driver. I used to assume that MS new best on how to integrate
drivers into there OS.

>
> In the end, when it works right, the SBLive 5.1 cards are darn good
> sound quality cards, imho, and I fought the battle to get mine working
> in it's current system because it's my "digital recording" machine
> which I use for recording/digitizing old vinyl records and for
> recording satellite TV receiver audio/video programming which I make
> into DVDs for my kid.

Yeah, I have an old full size Roland MIDI keyboard with weighted keys
from the late 80's that I hooked up to the Circuit City bought SB 5.1 in
my system. The Roland needs repair now (dust hopefully). But the
soundfonts for the SoundBlaster sound good to me. I think it could be
used professionally in this application if needed be. But then there is
probably better recommended sound hardware out there for this purpose.
I've been wanting to digitize old vinyl with the SoundBlaster too.
Haven't gotten around to that yet. The thing now seems to be a USB
connected turn table, but I would rather use my old Onkyo turntable that
hasn't spun in years. But with a new needle, a good preamp, and wave
editing software, I'm thinking I'd get better results.

>
> Of course, there is one other possibility, such as some sort of
> oddball driver conflict between the SBLive driver and some other
> system driver. However, I'd give the "install the latest drivers"
> approach a go before giving up.

She's sittin' on the table now. But I'm not throwing it away (I'm a PC
hardware pack rat). Will use the advice givin in this thread if I use it
in the future. I might need to find the latest Dell specific driver for
it though.

Eddie

mr deo wrote:
> "E" <> wrote in message
> news:...
>> The current driver in the problem PC is the original 2001 dated driver
>> that comes with XP. I assumed it would be stable. Windows Update is
> offering
>> a more recent driver dated 2003. I haven't checked Creative's site yet.
>> Still not sure whether to update the driver, or just remove the card all
>> together. I'm leaning towards the later.
>>
>> Thanks for your reply
>> Eddie
>
> I use 3 creative cards at the moment, and I must say that I do like them!..
> But....
> The onboard sound is probably fine for what your user wants (they had a dell
> FFS lol)..\

LOL. Yes, that is what I have done, along with a complete reinstall of
the OS. I'm hoping the system has plenty of resources to run the Sims
with the onboard SoundMax. Just as long as there isn't some other
hardware problem that I have neglected to test for.

>
> Removing the card AND the drivers and allowing it to run long enough to see
> if it bluescreens means that you can eliminate it..
> If it crashes with the card out AND drivers removed, then that's your
> problem..

I had the system running on and off for over 24 hours. As long as 5 to 6
hours straight. I'm regretting not putting a load on the system to see
how it performed. Didn't do any benchmarks or burn ins. Hopefully I
won't get a call to run prime95. If so, I'll be back posting more
minidump results. Unless she gives up on me and the PC and buys a GD
Dell, with plenty of preloaded Dell helper applications to go along with
future spyware.

>
> with Creative products the newest driver isnt forever the best, but I would
> try to get say the last 3-4 releases.. I dont know if any of their patches
> contain firmware fixes but you might want to be aware of that just in case..
> (as you cant roll them back as easily)
>
>

See other recent replies I've made in these thread. This particular SB
is specifically a 'SoundBlaster Live! Digital (Dell)'. It came out of
her old Dell Dimension 4100. Creative no longer seems to care about the
Dell version of it, although they have 2003 drivers for the regular SB
Live! 5.1. And Dell doesn't care about it with Windows XP on a Dell
Dimension 4100. I haven't done a thorough search for the Dell specific
driver though.