Soundcard Problems

[PietroCrespi]

I wasn't sure where to put this, but I figured the people here would be the most knowledgable about it on MX.

I'm in the middle of recording some rough demos and I was trying to clear out some space on my computer. I was using Disk Cleanup to clean up installed programs. I removed something from Creative that I thought was from my old mp3 player, but turns out may have been my soundcard. Whenever I want to play a clip or something messages come up saying stuff like "Error while opening sound device" or "Another device may be using the sound device". There is no other program using it and I've restarted the computer several times.

I went to "Settings -> Control Panel -> System -> Device Manager" and under "Sound, video, and game controllers" it has "Creative SoundBlaster Audio PCI 128D (WDM)" and next to it there is an icon with a yellow circle and exclamation point over it. When I go to it it says under Device Status, "The ... device leaders for this device could not load the device driver (Code 2)". Does anyone know how to fix this so I can get my sound going again?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Moseph]

Have you rebooted? That's normally the first thing to try.

What you may have done is uninstall the drivers for the device, so rebooting or attempting to "install new device" will find suitable drivers for your soundcard. A system restore disc or soundcard driver disc will also do the trick.

Based on the yellow icon problem, it sounds like you need to reinstall the device.

However, Disk Cleanup doesn't normally have any affect on the drivers. Many times two programs using the soundcard at once is a big no-no. Are you using some sort of background media player (iTunes, Musicmatch, Winamp, etc.) at the same time as your recording/mixing software?

[ncrypted]

Okay...ummm...it looks like you may very well have deleted your sound card drivers....don't panic though...Hopefully that's large and friendly enough. :)

From the info you provided, sounds like you have a soundblaster card, although I don't know which model...in any case, you can download drivers here:

http://www.creative.com/language.asp?sDestUrl=/support/downloads

this is the manufacturer's website, and should walk you through all the steps in DLing and re-installing your drivers. If you have too much trouble, let me know, and I'll see if I can generate a walkthrough to help you.... (no promises tho)

[PietroCrespi]

Thanks, I fixed it before you two replied. It turned out that I messed up the drivers some how and each time I tried to reinstall them they still had errors. I just downloaded a new driver off the creative website (like you later suggested). Thanks anyways guys!