Windows 10 Well I guess it's out of my hands...

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

I was still trying to decide whether to do a clean install this morning.

I was checking to make sure that Guild Wars 2 was working after my recent redo of my second hard drive when the game suddenly closed and the message, "Windows need to restart several times to finish updating".

I had not asked it to update, but I decided what the H, and let it reboot.

So I'm all updated to build 9926 and it looks really good.

There's only one problem, as I feared my sound is all messed up.
I updated my sound drivers and now my sound doesn't work right.

It is exactly the way it was when I updated to Windows 8.1, and when I manually updated the drivers for my sound card by downloading the drivers from Creative.

Anything with speech in it is basically a mess, and that included Cortana.
No sound from her at all, or my Windows sounds that I've made using TextAloud, these are all .wav files.

If I play video online the speech is messed up.

The normal Windows sounds and my music files play OK, anything with speech, either computer generated, or just regular recorded sound are either distorted or nonexistent.

I'm not going to roll back to the earlier version this time, I need to get this fixed.

I have two options, I can roll back my sound driver to what it was in Windows 7 and 8, (prior to Windows 8.1) or I can get a new, non Creative sound card.

Can anyone tell me if it's possible to restore my drivers to what they were before the latest update?

I'd also like to know what sound card people are using that doesn't have any issues with the later Windows versions.

I'm going to ask Creative support but I did that before and got nothing in the way of a solution.

Thanks for the help.

Mike

I just discovered that I get exactly the same kind of distortion in Skype, the sound is muted and badly distorted, it sounds like someone talking through a dozen pillows at the bottom of a well, and is completely unintelligible.

Computer Games as well.
Ambient sounds, music etc, are fine, Voices are not distorted but are so faint that you can't understand them, even when turned to full volume.

Weirder and weirder, I'm playing Dragon Age Inquisition and suddenly a voice booms out at me.
It seem that because the voice is part of the background sound it plays normally, while voices that are part of the game play do not.

 

[Jimbo22]

non Creative sound card.

I would try that....

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

I got the sound fixed, at least for now.
I tried installing the drivers from my original Creative disk that came with my computer.

It didn't work, when I rebooted it updated the driver and was back to the way it was.

Next I uninstalled the sound card in device manager and told it to delete all the software for it.
Then I reinstalled it again from the original disk and when I rebooted it started working normally again.

I don't get why this is like this, why aren't the later drivers compatible with Windows after Windows 8?

Well if I can just keep it from updating now, maybe it will be OK.

In the last version I was able to tell it not to update the drivers.
I'm going to see if I can find that now.

Mike

 

[Trouble]

Control Panel->All Control Panel Items->System
Advanced System Settings link on left
Hardware Tab
Device Installation button
No let me choose radio button
Never install driver software from Windows Update

That's pretty much the same place it has always been.
Now whether it works correctly or ignores you and does it anyway might be a different story.

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Thanks Trouble...

I did as you suggested, now we'll see if it works in TP.
Last time I think I did it in Windows update so I'm going to check there too.

I have everything working now, including Cortana.
I had a hard time getting Windows to detect my webcam but that's working now as well.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Mike