creative sound blaster x-fi

i have a compaq v6000 lappy running vista i am trying to get my xfi card working the card shows power as the led stares at me laughing but the card is not recognized by windows nothing in hardware its like i never pluged anything in so im confused asked creative told about drivers and other bs drivers wont load if computer doesnt see card so you can see my frustrations with creative when they keep telling me about drivers. so i contact hp have me flash my bios reload nforce drivers nothing is working then they tell me which i dont belive that my laptop doesnt support soundcards they say this but they even sell a oem version of the card so my pea is that someone can help me im not a noob but im getting frustrated so please help if you need more info from me let me know:frusty:

I don't know much about expresscards, but I understand they connect via USB or PCI Express. Obviously, USB is hot pluggable, but I'm not sure whether that's the same for PCI Express, so it is probably best to make sure you shut the laptop down completely to be sure that it will recognise the card. It almost certainly won't make any difference, but if you haven't done this yet it might be worth a try.

With regard to drivers, it is always a good idea to install drivers before installing PnP hardware. That way the drivers are ready as soon as the hardware is detected. The only problem comes when some manufacturers bind the driver installation in with some other software which won't install without the hardware.

There are no bios updates that affect this issue, although there is a bios update what you should install anyway if your laptop has an AMD processor. There's also absolutely no reason why you can't install extra audio devices. HP seem to be talking out of their backsides (nothing new there).

If you still can't get this card recognised, I'd say that either the card or the laptop must be faulty. The only real way you are going to find out which is to try the card in another laptop. If it is recognised then the laptop is faulty, if not then the card is duff.

thanks i tried starting with the card in even doing a clean boot and the card does work in another laptop so im lost

Do you have some other type of expresscard that you can try?

If so, and it doesn't work, then it is clearly a fault with the laptop.

Either way, if it is still under warranty you should be asking HP to sort it out. They can't say "we don't support that card", it's an expresscard slot, it should accept any expresscard.

ill try to find one but its out of warranty

it may not be the laptops fault. i've had creative cards in the past (and am running one now as well) and they are VERY sensitive to drivers. make sure u have the driver that is supposed to go with this card. make sure u are installing teh correct bit ie 32 bit or 64 bit type drivers. creative don't update their drivers that often so just make sure ur installing the proper ones. if worse cums to worse have u tried using the drivers that came with it? i realise that u may have tried all these options i'm just reminding u just incase u haven't. i had a hp 10 years ago and tried to install "new" soundblaster drivers for a card i had acquired. could NEVER get it to work. maybe the same issue here. it's all about the drivers...

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Originally Posted by mr. nails

it may not be the laptops fault. i've had creative cards in the past (and am running one now as well) and they are VERY sensitive to drivers. make sure u have the driver that is supposed to go with this card. make sure u are installing teh correct bit ie 32 bit or 64 bit type drivers. creative don't update their drivers that often so just make sure ur installing the proper ones. if worse cums to worse have u tried using the drivers that came with it? i realise that u may have tried all these options i'm just reminding u just incase u haven't. i had a hp 10 years ago and tried to install "new" soundblaster drivers for a card i had acquired. could NEVER get it to work. maybe the same issue here. it's all about the drivers...

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Except that the machine has to recognise that there is a card present in the first place. If you go back to the beginning of the thread and read carefully (yes, I know it's not that easy) you will notice is the original problem.

im still looking for a card to try