Soundblaster works... but only once!

[guyrowlanduk]

Hello, my first post here!

Here's a good one for you. Have had a Soundblaster Live! 24 for a coupla years, works fine. Recently changed my m/board after a failure to a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P, and very nice too. I was using its onboard HD audio until my Avid Xpress suite refused to install - it needs an SB compatible card to work. No problems, uninstalled HD Audio, deactivated from the BIOS, and installed the Soundblaster. Downloaded the latest drivers, and I was away....

...until the PC came out of standby, whereupon it refused to believe I had a soundcard at all. Reinstalled the driver, whereapon it told me I definitely had no hardware. So powered down, removed card, powered up and down, inserted card, powered up and it found new hardware. Everything working great again. Suspicious, I powered down and up again... and low and behold, no hardware any more.

All ideas gratefully received! Am happy to buy a new soundcard, but could it be an IRQ conflict or something? PCI IRQs are set to Auto in the BIOS.

 

[guyrowlanduk]

...forgot to add, running under XP, SP2.

Grateful even for hunches as to whether it is a soundcard, an m/board, a bios or a windows problem!

 

[guyrowlanduk]

And in answer to my own question - it was the bios!

Updated it from f4 to f6 - there was a mention of the latest version fixing a bug to do with PCI. Still didn't recognise the card at first, but after swapping back to the original slot, it fired up fine - and has stayed working through 4 complete power cylces!