Driver update resets system DURING installation

  • Thread starter Thread starter Stunn
  • Start date Start date
S

Stunn

Hi All,

The problem is with the updates for my soundcard (direct from Creative's
website). When I try to install, uninstall, rollback, etc, etc, (i.e.
anything to do with changing the drivers) the system resets
itself during the operation. After re-booting, the drivers remain
unchanged from their original state - an older version of the same
drivers.

I've tried booting with a diagnostics disk, deleting all the files
listed under the driver window for the soundcard, and re-booting. The
'wonderful' WinXP just reinstates everything during start-up without
asking!

Same applies in Safe Mode, and whether I am logged in as Administrator
or a standard user.

My last idea was to install WinXP on an old drive, copy the Windows
directory, install the drivers on the clean system, then make a
comparison of changed files, and apply those changes to my existing
system files - until I realised that there were about 300 changed files.

I have no intentions of reinstalling WinXP from scratch just to update
the soundcard drivers, but I really want these drivers as they solve an
issue that's been bugging me for months. Can anyone suggest a method to
get around this, that doesn't involve reinstalling the OS?

TIA
Stunn

P.S. the issue that's been bugging me - just in case anyone has a
suggestion for that - is that, after a re-boot, the sound only issues
from the front two speakers until I change speaker settings to two
speakers, then back to quad.

Soundcard: Soundblaster Live! FourPointSurround.
 
Try uninstalling the soundcard control
panel/system/hardware/device manager/sound,video game
controller - reboot (new device dialog should come up)
then install the drivers.
G,luck
 
Thanks for the suggestion but I've already tried it. Same result I'm
afraid, dialog box comes up to say that it's uninstalling, system
freezes for a few seconds then resets itself without warning, and when
it comes back on nothing has changed.
 
It's likely that the new driver's are performing an illegal operation. In
the past this would have resulted in a STOP error (blue screen message).
Windows XP however, is pre-set to reboot on errors, so you're not seeing the
error screen. You can disable the auto-reboot in you system properties
settings. When you do, you'll get the blue screen message text and thus
likely get a bit more information about exactly what is going wrong. This
doesn't fix anything, and you'll still have to reboot from the blue screen,
but at least you can see what happened.

Scott
 
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