Audigy 2 Platinum
 

Probably not the best place to post this, but the Creative-hosted groups are
either full of spam or emptier than Bush's cranium.

I have the above card in a Dell (please don't laugh - it was a gift!) 8300.
Fresh installation of XP Pro (plus SP1). I can plug it in to any of the
availble slots (of which there are three, if you don't count the one next to
the 9800). Windows detects the card and prompts for the driver disc. I have
done this both ways and it doesn't work either way. I cancel the Windows
detection, insert the driver disc and tell it to install the drivers. It
starts to run the setup process, then it dies and informs me it cannot find
an Audigy 2 card and setup quits.

The above also happens if I let Windows continue with the detection.

The only way I can have sound (and it isn't very good - I installed a game
today and it's crackly and distorted) is if I run the CTZAP applet (if you
look on the driver installation disc it's in the Audio/Drivers folder) and
install the WDM driver from that. This is just a basic driver with no EAX
support or anything (rather like the crappy drivers XP installs for legacy
hardware).

I cannot download any updates from Creative (the Auto Update doesn't pick up
the card and, if I download the driver manually it fails with the same error
as above).

The thing is when I first got the system it worked perfectly. This is a
retail version of XP, not Dell's preinstalled garbage - that went tout suite
when I got the system (and the first time I installed the driver it went
fine).

Both Dell and Creative have surpassed themselves in their uselessness.

Could some kind soul suggest what might be happening (bearing in mind there
can't be too much wrong with the card as it's detected) and offer a fix?

It's frustrating having a £150 card and not being able to use it to its full
potential!

I should mention that I'm running the latest version of DX9, if it makes any
difference.

Thanks, folks.