""I dual boot with Windows XP and on the XP side the X-Fi drivers are pretty much workingly perfectly at this point. However on my Vista 64 side I quickly identify three issues that always seem to come up.
- Speaker configuration not properly detected. Even though Vista is setup for 5.1 sound, the drivers default to 2.0.
- Even if the speakers are changed to 5.1 in the Creative control panels, I still only get 2.0 sound.
- Creative settings reset everytime the computer reboots.
- Can not hear mic.
Speaker Configuration:
It sounds like the CTXFIREG.exe process is suppose to be the one that detects that I have a 5.1 speaker configuration in the Windows audio control panel and synchronize this setting with the Creative control panels, but it doesn’t. To fix this I just launch the Creative Console Launcher. Go into each of the three modes, Game, Entertainment, and Audio Creation, and set the speakers to 5.1 manually. But don’t do that just yet until you see the next paragraph.
2.0 Sound from 5.1 Speakers:
Even after I manually set my speakers to 5.1 in the Creative control panel, and I successfully hear test tones from all 5 speakers, I will still only hear 2.0 sound from games and movies. I found the fix for this is to launch the Creative Console Launcher, go to Game Mode and press the default button. This resets the speakers back to 2.0, but now when I select 5.1, I’ll actually hear 5.1 from my games and movies. Repeat this for the Entertainment Mode too. Make sure Audio Creation is still set to 5.1 mode, but it has no Default reset button for this mode (I don’t really use this mode anyway).
Creative Settings Reset:
Unfortunately after you’ve fixed your speaker out configuration and you got your movies and games sounding right, you might find that after rebooting things go back to 2.0 sound again. Sometimes it may not even happen after the first reboot, but later. Apparently the cause is that CTXIREG.exe process again. That process that supposedly tries to synchronize settings between the Windows and Creative control panels. Something doesn’t go right and the settings get reset by this. Disabling this process with MSCONFIG (or removing it from HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run) seems to fix the problem."
