Windows 8 Want to upgrade again, need ideas about sound errors?

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

I want to upgrade to Windows 8.1 but I've had problems with it.

As long as I'm running Windows 8 and my sound is fine.

When I upgraded to Windows 8.1, Windows installed new sound drivers and my sound is distorted especially computer generated speech, and sound in computer games.

After a day of messing with it I used my image backup to restore to Windows 8.

More recently I tried to just update to the latest Creative Drivers for my sound card, it is a, SB Recon3D PCLe sound card.

As soon as I updated to the 2014 drivers all the problems came back just as they did in Windows 8.1.

To recover I uninstalled my Sound Blaster card in Device Manager and let Windows reinstall the default driver.

So here is my question, I'd like to upgrade Windows and then downgrade the drivers to the one I'm using now.


Creative Driver

Driver Date 2/29/2012

Driver Version 6.0.100.1036

Digital Signer Microsoft Windows Compatibility Publisher.

Can I do that?

And if so where do I get the driver installation package.
I've searched for this driver and they all come up blank.

This seems to be the Driver that Windows 8 installs by default but I'm not sure how I could make Windows 8.1 use this driver.

When I did upgrade everything worked fine except my sound.
At the time I found a lot of other people having similar issues most or all of them with SB Recon3D PCLe sound cards.

I don't know if anyone found a solution.

The problem was very weird, digital speech which I use a lot would be so badly distorted that it was unintelligible while music would be fine, even on the same sound file.

Things that I had recorded a year ago, and that played fine on my computer, (and any other computer) before the upgrade wouldn't play after the upgrade, from the same .wave or MP3 files.

Sound in computer games was distorted, (the main complaint I found online) but for me the killer was not being able to use me text to speech. I use this a lot.

If I can't resolve this I'll either have to change sound cards or not upgrade Windows.

I've posted about this twice on the Creative forum and not gotten any response.

Anyone have any ideas?

Mike

 

[ussnorway]

Hi Mike… this is that desktop again yes?

Have you tried removing the sound card before doing the update… put it back in after and tell Windows you want to use your driver. This should allow you to skip the default Microsoft driver getting a foothold.

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

Yes this is on my PC.

I hadn't thought of that but won't Windows 8.1 detect and install the default driver the first time it boots up? I don't remember it every asking me what driver I want it to install.

If I had a driver installer for the driver I have on my computer I'd try getting it to overwrite the existing one, there is the roll back driver option in Device Manager but I'm no sure what I need to have and where I need to put it to make it do that.

I tried that after I did the update but it said that there was no driver to roll back to. so it no longer saw the Windows 8 driver.

I'm not sure what causes the problem, it seems to be a Creative Issue with the driver, not Windows 8.1, because just updating the driver causes the problem, even if I don't upgrade Windows.

I've contacted them but not gotten any help.

I may have to wait for Windows 9 and then if I still have the problem buy a different brand of sound card.

Mike