Hi chaps, I'm wondering if any of you have had a similar issue to me regarding my delightfully cheap sound card, a "Trust 514DX 5.1 Sound Expert Optical"
I bought this card because I wanted an S/PDIF *input* to transfer audio data from an Akai DPS-12 digital personal studio (borrowed I'll note!), to my PC, without resorting to ugly analogue methods. It was a stonking 15 quid, and after some pain finding the right mixer configuration settings, it actually did what I wanted - I was happy. I replaced my aging Creative AWE64 with it.
Then I tried to play games - lockups and/or game crashes ensued
I tried to record Dr Who off the telly with Ulead Media Studio - lockup.
Not so happy - so I went looking for driver upgrades, only to find that C-Media (who make the chipset) offer a driver that is four revisions behind the default one in WinXP/SP1 - huh? Well I tried it anyway - and lo! Everyting seemed to work, for about a month.
Well this week the PC crashed on boot - full BSOD and memory dump style. Safe mode got it back, and disabling the sound card driver sorted the boot crash - now I can boot, enable the card and use it, but have to disable it before shutting down or it won't boot again. Tried going back to newer driver - same behaviour.
more details:
Mobo: ABit BD7-II (on board audio disabled in BIOS)
O/S: WinXP Pro/SP1 (+ critical patches)
Sound chipset: CMI 8738-MX
I've scoured t'net looking for 3rd party drivers, but found only C-Media ones, I've even thought about back-porting the Linux ALSA driver (since they hand out source code), but that's a bit extreme!
Currently I'm toying with getting a Creative SB Exigy (found a cheap source - 50 quid), or a separate S/PDIF <> USB adapter (Roland make one - 60 effin quid for a what is basically a serial/USB adapter!)
Your thoughts are welcome...
I bought this card because I wanted an S/PDIF *input* to transfer audio data from an Akai DPS-12 digital personal studio (borrowed I'll note!), to my PC, without resorting to ugly analogue methods. It was a stonking 15 quid, and after some pain finding the right mixer configuration settings, it actually did what I wanted - I was happy. I replaced my aging Creative AWE64 with it.
Then I tried to play games - lockups and/or game crashes ensued
I tried to record Dr Who off the telly with Ulead Media Studio - lockup.
Not so happy - so I went looking for driver upgrades, only to find that C-Media (who make the chipset) offer a driver that is four revisions behind the default one in WinXP/SP1 - huh? Well I tried it anyway - and lo! Everyting seemed to work, for about a month.
Well this week the PC crashed on boot - full BSOD and memory dump style. Safe mode got it back, and disabling the sound card driver sorted the boot crash - now I can boot, enable the card and use it, but have to disable it before shutting down or it won't boot again. Tried going back to newer driver - same behaviour.
more details:
Mobo: ABit BD7-II (on board audio disabled in BIOS)
O/S: WinXP Pro/SP1 (+ critical patches)
Sound chipset: CMI 8738-MX
I've scoured t'net looking for 3rd party drivers, but found only C-Media ones, I've even thought about back-porting the Linux ALSA driver (since they hand out source code), but that's a bit extreme!
Currently I'm toying with getting a Creative SB Exigy (found a cheap source - 50 quid), or a separate S/PDIF <> USB adapter (Roland make one - 60 effin quid for a what is basically a serial/USB adapter!)
Your thoughts are welcome...