Vista - x-fi extremegamer just WILL NOT INSTALL PROPERLY

well ive tried reinstalling vista 4 times (3 with 64bit once with 32bit) and i not once managed to get my x-fi extremegamer to install properly. Its really made me an unhappy camper.

My motherboard (Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3R) has just added some xfi drivers on its driver updates page which Im hoping is to address why I can never get it to install the damn thing properly. Theres no other reason why they should put up xfi drivers for my mobo considering it doesnt have onboard xfi so the only reason I can think of is to fix this problem I get with my xfi and vista.

GIGABYTE - Support&Download - Motherboard - Driver - GA-EP45-DS3R (rev. 1.0)

I've tried everything. Every driver release and no matter what it always fails.

have you disabled the onboard audio in the bios? that might help

lol of course Ive disabled it

lol ermm, not much else you can do, if its not installing maybe its the wrong driver, have you tried other drivers from creative?

edit:link to drivers http://support.creative.com/download...wnloadId=10659

I've tried the drivers from the disc as well as every single driver release from creative for that card (havent tried the 17 Dec ones yet though Im about to but I wont hold my breath) which is like 3 different driver releases plus a beta release and they all had the same issues.

Ive also tried both PCI slots just to eliminate it as the cause so its not that

ok, before you do, have you tried the drivers direct from windows update? or did it not suggest any drivers?

hmm good point I dont remember. I dont think it suggested any though, Ill have to check when I try installing vista again tonight

ok mate, good luck and i wish you a happy new year.

OK first things first, your motherboard DOES NOT have a X-Fi on it; all it has is a Realtek audio and it uses the X-Fi Xtreme Audio software, which is what that download on Gigabyte's site is. All that does is let you use some of the X-Fi software, and nothing else.

Make good and sure that you have uninstalled anything and everything related to the onboard audio, both Realtek drivers and any Creative drivers/software. Don't really like recommending using it but might also be a good idea to use Driver Sweeper,

Guru3D - Driver Sweeper

to help with cleaning thigs up (uninstall in normal mode, and run DS in safe mode). Either that or re-install Windows one more time (guarranteed method of removing everything), and make good and sure that anything relating to the onboard audio is disabled first. Then install the latest driver from the link that MrNeeds posted (Creative's site is acting up again so select the Xtreme Music to get the driver, they all use the same driver anyway) as well as the Console Launcher.

Whatever you do if it is the Xtreme Gamer that you have DO NOT try and install anything that relates to the Extreme Audio, as the Xtreme Audio is a X-Fi in name only (and should have never been called one in the first place).

whenever Ive gone and installed the drivers from the creative site (only in vista - doesnt happen in xp) and even if i extract them from the zip file and run them about half way it will ask me to specify a .bin file and I think another file or too like it cant read them or some **** which is ridiculous. Ive never had that problem with xp so maybe thats something to do with whats going wrong. I usually end up finding the file its asking for and tell it where it is but maybe the fact that its unable to read them itself like it can with xp is making it miss something in the installation... I dunno why it does that, maybe user permissions or something I havent used Vista much coz its never worked right for me, when I have I noticed how annoying it is with permissions compared to xp