I've recently had to reinstall windows xp on my dell as there was an unrepairable error with the xp operating system that could only be fixed by a fresh install and cleaning the entire hard drive. I installed windows without a problem and all the onboard drivers for the motherboard, however when i came to install my X-Fi Soundcard i haven't encountered several errors and i just can't find anyway of fixing the problem. The strange thing is before i reinstalled windows i had this soundcard working perfectly for over a year.

First of all when i was installing the software/drivers from the cd onto the hard drive, the installation froze at 4% at updating windows system files. So i had to close the installation and remove the parts that it did put on the hard drive using a registry cleaner. I then tried another install and this time i did it in safe mode which in this case allowed everything to install without any crash and finished the installation and asked me to restart. When i restarted the control panel icon was in the bottom right but there was no sound. When i double clicked it, it stated there was no audio device present. How was this possible when i had got my soundcard in my pci express port? And before this question is asked, no i don't have my onboard sound enabled and the drivers for it were uninstalled. When i went onto the sound devices window it had the X-Fi soundblaster logo under the sound device however when i clikced onto its properties there was no way of changing the system volume, it only had options for inputs volumes and levels and i don't think even these were working correctly. Under the codecs tab in sound, the X-Fi driver was present.

The thing that confuses me about this whole situation is that before i reinstalled windows, i had this soundcard working for over a year. Why has it stopped working now. A hardware error, but it was working literally a few days ago just before i had the windows blue screen error ( which i believe is completely unrelated to the soundcard). Or is this a software issue? Is there some missing files that i need on my machine before i install this soundcard?

This problem is really driving me insane, if you can help me out, you'd be doing me a big favour! If you need anymore information on this situation i can tell you more.

Please help me!!!!!! i want to listen to my music again!

Did you install Service Pack 2 (or 3 )

Did you try installing all the other drivers first?

I'm pretty sure when i reinstalled windows, it updated everything to service package 3. I can revert it back to 2 though if that will help? one of my mates did tell me its probably best to go back to 2 as its more stable.

Also i did all the major motherboard,processor, graphics card drivers first and then went on to install the sound card.

Try wiping everything and re-installing with Service Pack 2

(hey, second time's the charm (for me at least ) )